An epic tale of family, faith, power and oil set on the incendiary frontier of California's turn-of-the-century petroleum boom. The story chronicles the life and times of one Daniel Plainview, who transforms himself from a down-and-out silver miner raising a son on his own into a self-made oil tycoon. When Plainview gets a mysterious tip-off that there's a little town out West where an ocean of oil is oozing out of the ground, he heads with his son, H.W., to take their chances in dust-worn Little Boston. In this hardscrabble town, where the main excitement centers around the holy roller church of charismatic preacher Eli Sunday, Plainview and H.W. make their lucky strike. But even as the well raises all of their fortunes, nothing will remain the same as conflicts escalate and every human value--love, hope, community, belief, ambition and even the bond between father and son--is imperiled by corruption, deception and the flow of oil.

I remember reading Moby Dick in High School and the book takes more than a hundred pages describing whaling and all the intricacies in the art. But the problem is at its heart the book isn’t about whaling it is about Captain Ahab’s obsession with the whale and how that obsession destroys him in the end. There Will be Blood isn’t about the oil business and all of its intricacies but rather about how Daniel Plainview’s obsessive streak to always win no matter the cost drives him right to the brink of insanity. But just like Moby Dick the movie spends vast time exploring a subject that really isn’t that important to the story itself, we don’t need to know about the oil business to get the madness that creeps into Plainview nor does it help move the story along. What it does is turn what could have been an incredible tight 1 hour and 45 minute movie into a really good 2 and a half hour movie that trudges along at times.

Some directors just don’t understand the value of a good editor. A good editor can be the difference from a really good movie to one that blows you away and is one of the best movies of all time. Movies need to keep you interested, they need to keep your attention and a movie that feels too bulky and feels in the need of a little more editing can lose an audience and take away some of the punch of the film. And the thing is with the beauty of home video now days that you can put all the footage back in if you want in an unedited version of the movie for the fans of the movie. You don’t need it weighing you down nor do you need it making the movie a little slow at times.

The film can be brilliant at times, it can be riveting and you can almost feel the madness slowly creeping into Plainview. The fact that nobody speaks for the first ten minutes of the film and you are still interested still waiting to see what is going to happen speaks volumes. You feel the intensity building up, you feel it growing but it just takes too long to get there. It’s kind of like the score for the film which has to be one of the most over bearing scores I have ever heard in a film. It is so over the top, so much more than needed it feels like its trying to get you to believe in the intensity rather than letting it do it naturally. The music as keyed up we should be feeling this emotion, this intensity because the music is telling us we should. The movie was good, it was a journey into madness and how the obsession to always win eventually destroyed that man but it also was a little bit of a letdown at the same time.

Daniel Day-Lewis is an amazing actor, he is like capturing lightening in a bottle. He is pure bottled energy that you are just waiting to explode not sure where or when that explosion is going to happen just that is bound to eventually. Paul Dano is the opposite instead of all his energy being bottled up inside and waiting to explode his is on the outside channeled through his false prophecy and his church. He is the counter balance to Lewis his insanity is false and just a show to win peoples money while the drive that is eating Plainview alive is very real. A good movie that will get you talking but also a flawed movie where you could discuss its flaws as much as its strengths.

Grade: B+