Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-07-07
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 152 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
If there's a screen performance in 2008 that comes anywhere near to matching Daniel Day-Lewis' Oscar-winning turn in There Will Be Blood, then we've come nowhere near to seeing it. A tour-de-force of acting and a career high for Day-Lewis, it's the highlight of an extraordinary, really quite daring piece of cinema.

That said, we've come to expect nothing less from writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson, the man who previously brought us Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love. However, he's really topped himself in terms of ambition with There Will Be Blood, an adaptation of Upton Sinclair's book, Oil! It follows Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) who, when we first meet him in the film's silent opening is attempting to mine silver, before he discovers oil and slowly builds up an empire off the back of it. There Will Be Blood then follows his rise to power, given the vast riches that his oil brings him, concurrently exploring his relationship with his son. It proves to be a long, complex, stunning piece of work.

There's little room in There Will Be Blood for much more than the sheer power of Day-Lewis' performance, but credit Paul Dano (last seen saying an awful lot less in Little Miss Sunshine) for attempting to go toe-to-toe with the leading man. He's a foil of sorts for Plainview, playing a man as troubled and torn as Day-Lewis' character, and it's a career high to date for the young actor. The film, too, is a match for anything Paul Thomas Anderson has done to date, and that's some achievement.

With no easy resolution, and a degree of complexity in its characters that we all-too-rarely see from modern American films, There Will Be Blood is a challenging, at times breathtaking piece of cinema. It won't be to all tastes, and it adamantly refuses to give easy answers, but it's as daring as anything you'll see on screen all year. And Day-Lewis' performance ranks next to any of the all-time greats that you'd care to mention. --Simon Brew

DVD Description
Director Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is a masterly, unflinching examination of a consummately evil man. Daniel Plainview (via a transcendent performance by the great Daniel Day-Lewis) is, as he likes to remind those around him, an oil man: he finds it, he drills for it, and he makes money from it. Following a tip from a visitor named Paul Sunday, whose family sits atop a veritable ocean of oil, Plainview travels to the town of New Boston, California, with his young son. Sunday's preacher brother Eli (both roles are played by the excellent Paul Dano) grudgingly accepts Plainview's ambitions under the condition that he help fund the town church. As Plainview's plans come to fruition, a series of events begin to fracture the insular world he has constructed for himself, pitting Plainview against Sunday and forcing him to become even more vindictive and ruthless. Anderson proved with Boogie Nights and Magnolia that he was adept at handling expansive storylines and layered plots; however, he stakes out a claim here as a new master of the cinematic epic. The film is visually stunning, and alternates between lush widescreen shots of the desert and meticulously composed, darkly lit close-up of his actors, presenting complex images of the American landscape and the souls that dot it. As a narrative, There Will Be Blood is told with a sense of economy, yet never at the expense of the film's inherently grand scope. It's difficult to determine precisely what Anderson wants his viewers to take from the experience: the film is, in the end, appropriately complex and ambiguous. There Will Be Blood forces us to confront Plainville, who seems to be a larger-than-life personification of evil; that we don't entirely understand him at the film's conclusion is not a shortcoming, but rather a tribute to the depths of this most vile creature and this most brilliant film.

Note: There Will Be Blood will be packaged in environmentally-friendly cardboard made from recycled paper.

Synopsis
Director Paul Thomas Anderson's THERE WILL BE BLOOD is a masterly, unflinching examination of a consummately evil man. Daniel Plainview (via a transcendent performance by the great Daniel Day-Lewis) is, as he likes to remind those around him, an oil man: he finds it, he drills for it, and he makes money from it. Following a tip from a visitor named Paul Sunday, whose family sits atop a veritable ocean of oil, Plainview travels to the town of New Boston, California, with his young son. Sunday's preacher brother Eli (both roles are played by the excellent Paul Dano) grudgingly accepts Plainview's ambitions under the condition that he help fund the town church. As Plainview's plans come to fruition, a series of events begin to fracture the insular world he has constructed for himself, pitting Plainview against Sunday and forcing him to become even more vindictive and ruthless.
Anderson proved with BOOGIE NIGHTS and MAGNOLIA that he was adept at handling expansive storylines and layered plots; however, he stakes out a claim here as a new master of the cinematic epic. The film is visually stunning, and alternates between lush widescreen shots of the desert and meticulously composed, darkly lit close-up of his actors, presenting complex images of the American landscape and the souls that dot it. As a narrative, THERE WILL BE BLOOD is told with a sense of economy, yet never at the expense of the film's inherently grand scope. It's difficult to determine precisely what Anderson wants his viewers to take from the experience: the film is, in the end, appropriately complex and ambiguous. THERE WILL BE BLOOD forces us to confront Plainville, who seems to be a larger-than-life personification of evil; that we don't entirely understand him at the film's conclusion is not a shortcoming, but rather a tribute to the depths of this most vile creature and this most brilliant film.

Customer Reviews

He shoots....HE SCORES!
There are two things that make this film seriously special and although Daniel Day-Lewis is definitely one of them, he isn't the one that pushes this into the realms of the classics. The man who is responsible for that is Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood, because without his soundtrack this would have been a TOTALLY different film, indeed at times his music doesn't seem to have been scored for this film at all, which doesn't sound at face value like a good idea...but MY GOD. Greenwood takes TV-series Lost's building-orchestral-tune-up and turns it into a 150 minute symphony...it adds a sense of foreboding to even the most simple scene.
There are plenty of other reviews here that deal with the (brilliant) performances and (actually pretty derivative) story but the real news here is that we have a new composer who stands, on this evidence, on the same plain as Ennio Morricone. Blimey.

Accomplished film making with hollow core
To quote from Amazon's own review: `that we don't entirely understand Plainview at the film's conclusion is not a shortcoming, but rather a tribute to the depths of this most vile creature and this most brilliant film.'

Well I beg to differ: but it IS a shortcoming. Or it felt like one to me.

Just like No Country for Old Men, which I watched the subsequent night in a double bill of shattered-American-Dream masochism, it's an accomplished piece of film making containing a virtuoso performance or two. But likewise, it has been praised beyond its due and fails for not dissimilar reasons.

Day Lewis' character seems to have come from nowhere and journey from there to a richer, lonelier nowhere. Other than a brief insight into his motivation midway - where he illuminates us that he hates mankind - there is no explanation for his actions and his ruthless drive for money. He betrays everyone - townsfolk, son, brother. And his nemesis - preacher Eli - is just as scarily off the sanity Richter Scale, so there is no moral measure against which to guage him.

Some - like Amazon's own reviewer - will argue this doesn't matter. Except that makes it hard to care what happens to anyone, so by the time we reach the final scene it seems grotesque but dissatisfying. Plainview's son, his fellow oil men, the village inhabitants are too thinly outlined - characters are brought in, like the stubborn farmer who will not sell his land, then disappear - and was I the only one confused by the two lookalike-y brothers at the start? The result is not just rambling but disengaging, as man's every raison d'être - capitalism, faith, familial love - is set up and knocked down; and nothing remains, or emerges in its stead. I've heard this film described as a parable for our times. But where, exactly, is the moral or spiritual insight to justify such a term when the core is hollow?

At risk of being yet more incendiary (no pun intended), whilst there can be no doubt the film is a great vehicle for Day Lewis, I'd contend that he has been better. More than once I felt he was Acting with a capital `A'. Am I alone in having found him more subversive, moving, and above all subtle in his earlier films such as My Beautiful Launderette, My Left Foot and The Unbearable Lightness of Being? Whereas here, as with Gangs of New York, he seems to over egg it, creating a sense he is playing in a different movie to everyone else.

Finally, talking of over egging...that score. It interrupted constantly, like a radio in the same room tuned to a different station. At times it felt better suited to a thriller, at times to an epic romance. Never did it seem to sit with the film it had - presumably - been written for. And that, for me, sealed it. 3 stars. No more, no less.

Bloody Good
Firstly, I disagree with any reviewer who deems this film "boring". Very true that it is of slow velocity in comparison to the majority of contemporary blockbusters, but is this necessarily a bad trait? On the contrary I found it refreshingly intelligent, and in an audacious attempt, reverts to good old traditional film making, of which minimal script and superb acting (which I might add, the screen presence exuded by Day-Lewis is second to none, and is comparable to Javier Bardem's chilling performance as Anton Chigurh in 'No Country For Old Men') carry the film. This, combined with alluring cinematography, tangible score, and Anderson's directorial prowess, yields one fine movie experience.