Ciaran Hinds, Kevin J. O'Connor, Daniel Day-Lewis, Dillon Freasier, Paul Dano

If there's a screen performance in 2008 that comes anywhere near to matching Daniel Day-Lewis' Oscar-winning turn in There Will Be Blood, then we've come nowhere near to seeing it. A tour-de-force of acting and a career high for Day-Lewis, it's the highlight of an extraordinary, really quite daring piece of cinema.

That said, we've come to expect nothing less from writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson, the man who previously brought us Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love. However, he's really topped himself in terms of ambition with There Will Be Blood, an adaptation of Upton Sinclair's book, Oil! It follows Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) who, when we first meet him in the film's silent opening is attempting to mine silver, before he discovers oil and slowly builds up an empire off the back of it. There Will Be Blood then follows his rise to power, given the vast riches that his oil brings him, concurrently exploring his relationship with his son. It proves to be a long, complex, stunning piece of work.

There's little room in There Will Be Blood for much more than the sheer power of Day-Lewis' performance, but credit Paul Dano (last seen saying an awful lot less in Little Miss Sunshine) for attempting to go toe-to-toe with the leading man. He's a foil of sorts for Plainview, playing a man as troubled and torn as Day-Lewis' character, and it's a career high to date for the young actor. The film, too, is a match for anything Paul Thomas Anderson has done to date, and that's some achievement.

With no easy resolution, and a degree of complexity in its characters that we all-too-rarely see from modern American films, There Will Be Blood is a challenging, at times breathtaking piece of cinema. It won't be to all tastes, and it adamantly refuses to give easy answers, but it's as daring as anything you???ll see on screen all year. And Day-Lewis' performance ranks next to any of the all-time greats that you'd care to mention. --Simon Brew

The Blu-ray looks great, except for some grain in some of the darker and indoor sequences. The cinematography is very interesting and it's unusual these days to see a film with such slow pace and long shots - often without cutaways to other characters. Daniel Day Lewis is very good in the film, but for me the whole thing was just too bleak to warrant any more than three stars. The ending and the overall arc of the story were just not fulfilling, for me personally at least.

Just to inform, this Blu Ray has too the audio track in Castilian SPANISH (spain). And you can see too all the extras with subtitles in spanish.

This film has fantastic extras, and the movie itself is fantastic.

This is an amazing film, with very high acting skill from Day Lewis. The acting skill of this is just under a Robert De Niro performance, I compare every actor to De Niro as he is the greatest actor of all time!
Daniel gets a 5 out of 5 for his acting, but the story of this film is not great, that is why for me it hits a 3 out of 5. There were 2 films of 2008 that were the best and that's "There will be blood" & "No country for old men" so if you are looking to get one of these in Blu ray and can't decide, then I would recommend "No country for old men". That film gets 5 out of 5 for me as the acting is amazing with an amazing story line.

But if you can get both that's even better, that's what i've done. Final note "There will be blood" is very good acting but not a great story.

There Will Be Blood is without a doubt one of the best films I have seen all year and also one of the best films I have laid my eyes on! The plot of the film is about a prospector called Daniel Plainview (Played by Mr Day-Lewis) Plainview is working with a team of men on a primitive oil well. One of his workers is killed in an accident, and Plainview takes the man's orphaned child as his own. His successes allow him to expand his enterprise, and he negotiates for new leases with a sales pitch that he is family man with a family business with his son, H.W., as his partner. Plainview soon gets a tip off to the presence of oil in Little Boston, California. Plainview and H.W. travel there and find oil seeping to the surface of the ground and attempt to buy the property from the owner Abel. Abel's son, Eli suspects the true reason for Plainview's interest of buying the land and agrees with Plainview for a donation of $5,000 for Eli's Church. From there things go from bad to worse for Plainview and take a heavy toll on his mind with devastating consequences.

If you like your films with lots of action then you may want to avoid this at all costs as this is by mo means a action film but it is one of the greastest character driven drama films I have seen for a very long time and it is worth the watch just to see Daniel Day-Lewis Oscar winning performance.

all in all this is a A* film and as you would expect from a blu-ray DVD it has the sound a picture quality to match.

I had very high hopes for this movie after hearing all the hype from mainstream media, the Oscars and relatives who'd actually seen it. I sat down with an open mind and a genuine wish to experience what would no doubt prove to be a modern epic.

After the initial opening which seemed like a wordless, early oil drilling demonstration, I gradually began to wonder where this great acting, story and whatever else earned it an Oscar, were to be found and whether or not I was actually a blind moron for not seeing it.

It turns out that something's fishy about this movie from my perspective. Yes, it does have good acting in it, Oscar style acting, maybe... But the character's, while having their obvious intriguing quirks, say and do so very little in the grand scheme of things, with the movie trundling along at its own leisurely "This Is ART!" speed, it's very easy for the "unwashed masses" like myself to become incredibly bored by it.

I give it 1 star for it's inability and unwillingness to actually be entertaining for more than a few bursts per vast expanses. Much like the oil derricks dotting the deserts of Daniel Plainviews America, there's not much going on, and what is going on, isn't particularly interesting.

Someone give me back my wasted two and a half hours, to do something more productive like reading a book.