There Will Be Blood

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Year:	2007
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	Paul Thomas Anderson
Genre:	Overblown pioneering epic
Starring:	Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano
Rating:	3/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0469494/
Tagline:	When Ambition Meets Faith
Favourite line:	"Why don't I own this?"

Paul Thomas Anderson's multi-award winning colonial epic is a mixed affair.

The plot:
Daniel Day-Lewis, turning in the performance of a lifetime - quite a feat in a career already littered with more 'powerhouse' turns than you can swing an OSCAR at - plays Daniel Plainview, a prospector on the hunt for oil. On a visit with his adopted son to a small town, he learns that a local man believes that there is oil on his property. With difficulty, he convinces the man to give him the rights, and it's not long before the full might of his corporate machinery is in full swing.
But all will not be as easy as he hopes.
Conflict with his adopted son, a run in with the local evangelic nutter and industrial accidents all stand between him and his lucrative find.

Stunning acting and direction should render this a towering epic, to rival even Anderson's own Magnolia in terms of scope and power, but somehow the over-emoting and all too apparent 'award-hunting' get in the way.
Complex it is, but it is also a little too soap opera at times and, frankly, these moments bored me.
Of course, the standout here is Day-Lewis, whose bizarre interpretation of the lead character is both bewitching and irritating. Let's be honest: No-one has ever spoken this way, and no-one has ever had these mannerisms or affectations, but that does not mean it is not engaging and, as a result, it makes for compulsive viewing.
Not the work of genius others would try to persuade you it is, this is actually a touch disappointing from the usually magnificent PTA.