There Will Be Blood (2007)

This film is supposed to be based on Oil! (I'm putting this parenthetical in because frankly, I don't know how to deal with the punctuation problem in this title). However, I can't imagine Upton Sinclair writing something with such a morally ambiguous bad guy. So I think that the resemblance is probably faint. Anyway...

Ross will make some kind of lame argument about how he was distracted because of the similarity between the voice Daniel Day Lewis uses in this film and the voice that Will Ferrell uses in the Anchorman. However, I did not have that problem, so I will ignore that. Daniel Day Lewis is pretty awesome in this film. He maintains an incredible level of intensity throughout.

The writing in this film is, for the most part, very good. The tone is excellent. Visually, they really capture the dry, dusty West Texas desert (although the Cohen Brothers do the same thing better in Oh Brother). Paul Dano does such a fantastic job with the preacher that its hard to tell just how crazy his character is.

The problem with this movie is not anything it contains. Rather, it is what it doesn't contain...namely, about 15 years during which Daniel Day Lewis's character makes his big personal transition from father-trying-to-love-a-damaged-son, to father-stabbing-his-son-in-the-heart. Why, as a director, would you do that? Especially when you have an actor like Daniel Day Lewis who could probably pull off that kind of transition...oh...I don't know...ONSCREEN.

If I were feeling little more generous, I might be able to make an argument that it was intensional. Maybe the transition was unnecessary, because it was inevitable. When he took his son back, Day Lewis's character was going against his nature. Perhaps his failure to make that transition was so inevitable, that it didn't need to be shown. Perhaps. Or perhaps it was just lazy. Hard to tell.

Anyway, it is worth seeing because it is visually so striking, and Daniel Day Lewis is so great. Just ignore the ending (or walk out 15 minutes before) and you'll be fine.