IMDb #179 Review: There Will Be Blood (2007)

Source: Wikipedia

At the dawn of the twentieth century, a charismatic misanthrope transforms a sleepy western hamlet into an oil-drenched boomtown, through the power of personality and sociopathy.

First lesson: early fossil fuel extraction was grueling, messy, and crazy hazardous. Second: don't piss off the soft-spoken fire-and-brimstone young preacher. Though his family used to own the oil land, he still owns the souls of the religious community.

As the egocentric oil baron, Daniel Day-Lewis steals the show along with everything else, again thanks to insane method acting. His bristly mustache, clipped speech, raspy voice, and barely restrained intensity dominate the screen, and every inch of property his boots tread on. When provoked, his ire surges to the surface like an oil gusher.

His young son, his protege, suffers the brunt of his father's antisocial inclinations. When a mining accident strikes, as they do, the kid becomes broken goods. Between his successor's fading out and a half-brother appearing, the father takes steps to underscore his asshattery.

(About the soundtrack. Just as you seem to like unsympathetic protagonists, hope you like strings. Droning strings, thrumming strings, shrieking strings, singing strings. Expect lots.)

So this confirmed douchebag becomes filthy rich by slurping up the blood, sweat, and tears of the little people like a delicious milkshake. He builds a mansion with a marble-floored foyer and a bowling alley.

The title fulfills its promise; there actually is blood, eventually. This is hardly a gore-soaked spaghetti western, but more a simmering pressure cooker that emits intermittent bursts before it explodes. But the final shouting match, in the acoustically sublime bowling alley, cements the new standard for slow-burn masterpieces and unintentionally hilarious overacting.