PARAMOUNT VANTAGE/AP Photo Daniel Day-Lewis stars in “There Will Be Blood”

Contrary to what its title suggests, Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” is not a slasher/horror flick, nor does it feature much blood at all.

Nevertheless, “There Will Be Blood’s” Daniel Plainview — brilliantly played by Academy Award winner Daniel Day-Lewis — is someone you likely wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley or abandoned, decrepit house.

Plainview starts out likeable enough as just another hard-working miner on the hunt for silver and gold in 1898. After he and his crew strike a bit of oil, Plainview — along with his young son H.W. (Dillon Freasier) — sets out on his own as a well-off oil driller looking to become a wealthy oil driller.

When given a tip about some untapped land out west, Plainview and his son pose as quail hunters to scope it out. Plainview buys the property before buying up all the land around it because he learns that there’s enough oil in the ground to make him rich beyond his wildest dreams.

From there, Plainview recruits a crew to drill for oil. They finally do, though the oil strike results in permanent hearing loss for H.W. Plainview copes for a time before he finally grows tired of the boy’s mute ways and sends him away to a special school.

From there, Plainview — despite his increasing wealth — only further deteriorates.

He battles a local preacher/wannabe prophet (Paul Dano), even going so far as to rough him up while the oilmen watch. He kills a man with little remorse. He takes happiness in no one’s successes but his own, and he even admits as much.

Yet, as was the case with Denzel Washington’s Alonzo character in “Training Day,” the audience expects Day-Lewis’ Daniel Plainview to redeem himself near the end. He doesn’t, but rather continues down his path of greed, spite and self-destruction, a journey that is fully realized in the film’s haunting final moments.

“There Will Be Blood,” a beautifully shot but flawed film loosely based on the 1927 Upton Sinclair novel, “Oil!,” would have stayed as such with most anyone else in the lead role. But Day-Lewis, who recently won a Golden Globe for this role, lifts the movie with yet another stellar performance, just as he did with the 2002 Martin Scorcese pic, “Gangs of New York.”

True, there is little blood to be found in “There Will Be Blood,” though the final scene delivers on the film’s title.

Not that it matters.

Sometimes, the end result of a man’s greed is frightening enough.

CLINT HALE | 210SA
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