There Will Be Blood

This is an undeniably a great performance from Daniel Day Lewis as the utterly ruthless oil tycoon, Daniel Plainview. He has the best actor Oscar nomination and my money is on him walking off with it. He is mesmerising in the role – like a train wreck in slow motion, you just can’t take your eyes off him. I have some doubts as to whether the rest of the movie stacks up with the lashings of praise that have been bestowed on it. It seemed a tad long and yet still over ambitious in the grand scope of the story it is seeking to tell. Apart from Plainview none of the other characters are particularly well developed. The very few parts of the movie where Plainview is absent tend to drag. But these are small quibbles and on the whole this is a grand portrait of pathological greed and heartlessness, leading to madness and destruction. Very cheery stuff.