There Will Be Blood

Released in 2007, this movie rated R for violence.
Written for the screen and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, he who has brought us, Boogie Nights and Magnolia.
Based upon the novel "Oil!", written by Upton Sinclair. Sinclair was a prolific writer with publishing's ranging from 1898 to 1961. His novels include Roman Holiday, The Money Changers and The Jungle.

The cast.....

• Daniel Day Lewis plays the lead of Daniel Plainview, an independent oil man who learned how to drill when he was looking for gold. Lewis has a sparkling career filled with great roles in My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown, The Last of the Mohicans, The Age of Innocence, In the Name of the Father, and Gangs of New York. This actor does not do anything lightly.
• Paul Dano as the preacher Eliot Sunday and his brother Paul Sunday. Plano is good in this movie as he was Little Miss Sunshine playing the morose color blind Dwayne, and a couple of Sopranos episodes as Patrick Whalen.
• Ciaran Hinds plays Fletcher Daniel's business associate. Hinds is a common character actor seen in various spy type dramas since the early 1980's.

Daniel Plainview learns about drilling for oil by the trial and errors of gold mining. Pail Sunday comes to the independent driller and convinces him to come to his family farm to look for oil.
Daniel and his son HW come under the pretense of quail hunting, find oil seeping on the top of the ground. With Daniel's commitment to Eliot to fund his Church of Third Revelation, the family drillers buy up all the land they can in New Boston California. Soon after the purchase, oil is stuck, during which HW looses his hearing. After the well comes in, Eliot comes to Daniel for the promised payment of $5000.00, Daniel lashes out at Eliot, blaming him and his church for HW not being saved from his loss of hearing.
Then Daniel's unknown brother Henry Planview shows up from Fond du Lac, with news that his father had died three months previous.
Daniel has a disconnected manner of giving his son alcohol to quiet him down, and help him sleep. During the new brother's visit, HW reads Henry's diary, soon after lights a fire in Daniel's bunk house, an angry unspoken expression. In reaction Daniel puts the boy on a train for San Francisco. Standard oil comes to town and wants to buy Daniel out with offers of a million dollars. The last tract of land needed to build a pipeline is holding. Daniel intends to buy this land and marks out his pipeline path before the purchase is even made.
Then Daniel comes to believe that that Henry is not his half-brother but a fraud. It turns out that this was a man that met Daniel's half-brother before he died of tuberculosis. For his deception Daniel kills the fake half brother.
When Daniel and Bandy meet up, Bandy sets his price, Daniel has to be baptized at the Church of Third Revelation. At Eliot's church, he is asked to step forward as a new member, a sinner seeking salvation.

I've abandoned my child.
I've abandoned my boy.

HW comes home from San Francisco while the pipeline is being built. HW is angry, understandably so. A special teacher is brought in to help with HW's deaf communication.
By 1927 HW, still deaf, marries the youngest Sunday girl, Mary. Soon after HW decides to move to Mexico and try drilling for oil on his own. At this point Daniel reveals that HW is really an orphan, his father killed in his first hand dug oil well. Daniel had used him as a boy, for his sweet face, an inducement to landowners to sell out to the family business.

A bastard from a basket.

As HW leaves, Daniel does remember him fondly.
Then Eliot returns, finding Daniel asleep in his own bowling alley lane. Addled by alcolhol. Eliot's news is that old man Bandy has died at the age of 99, his grandson has travelled to Hollywood. Eliot wants to parlay Bandy's 1000 acre tract into oil fields with Daniel. Daniel's price is for Eliot to state that he is a false prophet, the original $5000 with interest, and a $100,00 bonus for brokering the deal. Eliot says ....

I am a false prophet, god is a superstition.

To which Daniel replies....

It was Paul who was chosen.
He was the smart one.
Stop crying you sniveling ass.

Then Daniel tells Eliot that he has already gotten the oil out of the Bandy tract. Eliot breaks down and admits to being a sinner, he wants help because he has lost all of his money in the 1929 stock market crash.
Daniel screaming....

I am the third revelation.

In a drunken rage Daniel kills Eliot with a bowling pin.

The end.

This was the first time that I've viewed a No-ReturnDVD rental. The store price of $0.99 is impossible to beat.

I give this movie a rating of 37 of 50.

• Character Development, 7 of 10, Daniel starts as a poor miner, becomes an oil baron. The boy turns out to be an orphan he co opted.
• Screenplay, 5 of 10, could have been better but could not seem to escape the period, would have worked better if written more like East of Eden.
• Acting, 9 of 10, Lewis won the Lead Actor's Academy Award for for this part, in 2007, a great actor in a great role created by a great writer.
• Photography, 7 of10, the views of California country were evocative of a century past.
• Plot, 9 of 10, created from the novel written by Upton Sinclair, famous for books about the meatpacking business in The Jungle. Set in California at the onset of the twentieth century, the setting is a precursor for the personal struggles detailed later by John Steinbeck.

A good movie, not for the women.

I am going to find the book and read it now.