Loosely based on Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel, Oil!, directed, produced, and written by Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood is the story of one man's fervent need for money and power — a need to control everyone and everything he comes in contact with. A boy he raised from infancy as his own son and a man who claims to be his brother eventually experience his wrath. The people don't matter to Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), only the power. As he builds an oil empire over the ensuing decades, it becomes clear that even money is of little interest to Daniel. Every breath he takes is motivated by the need to gain more power and control over others.

At 158 minutes, There Will Be Blood plays out like an old style Hollywood epic of the 1950s. In the film's first fifteen minutes, not a word is spoken. We see Daniel as a dirty, grizzled silver miner with an infant. Hacking away at stone at the bottom of a well mine, his anger evident with every strike, it is clear that Daniel is a man on a mission. Suddenly, his fight for silver ends when a ladder rung breaks, sending him plummeting to the bottom of the well that will surely be his grave. Plainview, not one to ever except failure or his own human frailty, hoists himself — broken leg and all — back to the surface to claim his find. He decides to blast the silver out of the pit to speed up the process. The blast rips apart the silver mine, but uncovers a ground oozing with oil. Daniel has found his ticket to the power he so craves.

There Will Be Blood moves at a slow but deliberate pace. Director Paul Thomas Anderson doesn't explain the passage of time from one scene to the next or fully explain why Plainview is doing one particular thing or another. He fully expects the viewer to follow along, pay attention, and fill in the empty spaces for themselves.

Anderson has put the film squarely on the shoulders of Daniel Day-Lewis. Lewis' intense portrayal of Plainview allows the viewer to watch as the character slowly loses his faith in mankind and his ego takes over. There isn't one single moment in There Will Be Blood where it becomes evident that Daniel's faith in people is lost, but rather a culmination of events throughout the film. In previous films such as My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father, Day-Lewis has shown himself to be a master at playing characters with lots of pent up emotions. He does it with such subtlety that there isn't a lot of yelling or violence until the character is so far gone, he is forced to release all of the pent up rage in one explosive burst.