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There Will Be Blood

Universal acclaim
Based on 39 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 621 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by: Paul Thomas Anderson
Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 26, 2007
DVD: April 8, 2008
Running Time: 158 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for some violence
Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Ciaran Hinds, and Kevin J. O'Connor
When Daniel Plainview gets a mysterious tip-off that there's a little town out West where an ocean of oil is oozing out of the ground, he heads there with his son, H.W., to take their chances in dust-worn Little Boston. In this hardscrabble town, where the main excitement centers around the HOLY ROLLER church of charismatic preacher Eli Sunday, Plainview and H.W. make their lucky strike. But even as the well raises all of their fortunes, nothing will remain the same as conflicts escalate and every human value--love, hope, community, belief, ambition, and even the bond between father and son--is imperiled by corruption, deception, and the flow of oil. (Paramount Vantage)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Boogie Nights Hard Eight Magnolia Punch-Drunk Love
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Newsweek David Ansen
There Will Be Blood is ferocious, and it will be championed and attacked with an equal ferocity. When the dust settles, we may look back on it as some kind of obsessed classic.
Read Full Review >Premiere Glenn Kenny
There Will Be Blood is, in fact, not a historical saga; rather, it's an absurdist, blackly comic horror film with a very idiosyncratic satanic figure at its core.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter John DeFore
Daniel Day-Lewis stuns in Paul Thomas Anderson's saga of a soul-dead oil man.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
An enthralling and powerfully eccentric American epic.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Boldly and magnificently strange, There Will Be Blood marks a significant departure in the work of Paul Thomas Anderson.
Read Full Review >Slate Dana Stevens
For a story that's all about the harnessing of fateful chthonic forces, Paul Thomas Anderson has dug deeper than ever before, and struck black gold.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
For bleakness, the movie can't be beat -- nor for brilliance.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
The film is above all a consummate work of art, one that transcends the historically fraught context of its making, and its pleasures are unapologetically aesthetic. It reveals, excites, disturbs, provokes, but the window it opens is to human consciousness itself.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Zack Haddad
This may be an extremely bold statement to make, but there hasn’t been such an amazing character study in film since “Citizen Kane.” I honestly can’t praise it enough. From the opening to the ghastly ending, this film will sit in the depths of your stomach for some time to come.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
This is truly a work of symphonic aspirations and masterful execution.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Daniel Day-Lewis's portrayal is not just the performance of the year -- there will be injustice if he doesn't win an Oscar -- but a creation of awesome proportions.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Anderson's uncompromising masterpiece will continue to resonate as a harrowing cautionary warning to a country with oil pumping through its veins, clouding its judgment and coarsening its soul.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
A searing, apocalyptic and finally breathtaking drama.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
With There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson has taken a stab at making The Great American Movie -- and I daresay he’s made one of them.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
An unusual, visually hypnotic, American Gothic historical epic that traces the rise and tragic fall of a Western mining magnate of the Gilded Age.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
There Will Be Blood" is anti-state of the art. It's the work of an analog filmmaker railing against an increasingly digitized world. In that sense, the movie is idiosyncratic, too: vintage visionary stuff.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
Anderson’s fearless, bighearted filmmaking is an antidote to the toxic cloud of Manifest Destiny. He has made a mad American classic.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
In terms of excitement, imagination and rule-busting experimentation, it's a gusher.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
The fact that that character happens to be so repellent -- and yet so endlessly fascinating -- is one of the film's many strokes of genius.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
There Will Be Blood is not a movie that disappears quietly.
Read Full Review >Empire Helen O'Hara
Uncompromising, intelligent and searing cinema. Along with The Assassination Of Jesse James... and No Country For Old Men, this is the best batch of Western-set dramas in decades. John Huston would have been proud.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
It's first-rank filmmaking, through and through, even if it struggles to find closure.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Sprawling yet cramped, There Will Be Blood may not be the best movie of the year, but it's certainly the strangest. It evokes passing comparisons to everything from "Giant" to "Citizen Kane" but it's impossible to pigeonhole.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
It's important to remember that Sinclair was as much a committed socialist as a novelist, someone who probably wrote for political purpose more than for dramatic effect. So while Day-Lewis' gorgeous acting largely disguises it, the people in "Blood" tend to be schematic and the film as a whole has a weakness for the didactic.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
A searingly intense and artful tale that grabs hold of the viewer from its jarring and wordless opening scenes and doesn't let go.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Just a few barrels short of being a masterpiece.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
That's not to say that There Will Be Blood isn't something exceptional; it's just that the movie is jarringly erratic, ranging from moments of delicacy to majesty to over-the-top bombast.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The kind of film that is easily called great. I am not sure of its greatness. It was filmed in the same area of Texas used by "No Country for Old Men," and that is a great film, and a perfect one. But There Will Be Blood"is not perfect, and in its imperfections we may see its reach exceeding its grasp. Which is not a dishonorable thing.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
With a grating symphonic score by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood and the constant sense of danger following Plainview, "Blood" does not release its grip on the audience until its last, bizarrely crazy minutes.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Between D-Day, the sheer ambition of Paul Thomas Anderson's historical epic and Robert Elswit's dazzling cinematography, this is a must-see movie - even though its emotional temperature rarely rises above freezing and the climax goes way, way, way over the top.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Unfortunately, the film's final third is poorly focused and, while there is a clear conclusion, it feels strangely hollow.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Ambitious, deeply flawed and studded with sequences that achieve pure, majestic greatness.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
It's mostly a disturbingly believable portrait of a psychopath whose true depths of rage are buried where none but he can see. The ironically named Plainview does not come into plain view until the last scene, and the lupine, scowling Day-Lewis is mesmerizing in the role.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
This has loads of swagger, but for stylistic audacity I prefer Anderson's more scattershot "Magnolia."
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Anderson almost brings off a picture worthy of his grandiose ambition.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
There are epic impulses everywhere you look in There Will Be Blood; what's missing is character development, focused storytelling and, most significantly (apart from that terrific opening sequence), any sense of raw, intuitive drama.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Anderson and Day-Lewis strip themselves of their natural talents for invention and poetry, as if any hint of romance, nobility or fun would soften the film.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.1 (out of 10) based on 621 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Cuthrin K. gave it a3:
Quite overrated but the looks of it. Excellent acting by most of the actors, but the story is like an acid-time-travel trip to the olden times.
Robert M gave it a3:
I'm still trying to figure out what was so great about this movie!! The first fifteen minutes were addicting since it had no words. I found that compelling, but the movie failed to make me care about an ambitious, cold hearted oil tycoon! I was upset that he didn't die or get killed! This was 3 hours of a snorefest!
Wad M gave it a0:
This movie Blows!!!
Leo B gave it a10:
Anyone who deems this work of art a 'movie' is truly mistaken - a film of the highest caliber.
Jimmy M gave it a10:
I can understand the people that didn't like the movie- but most of these negative reviews are ridiculous. I'm sure everyone who wants their "3 hours" will spend it watching "Friends" re-runs ad "The Fast and The Furious". This is the best movie of the decade. It just goes to show that audiences these days don't care about great films. Sad.
Nathan K. gave it a4:
Boring and contrived... one of the most horrid movies i've ever seen. the best part was the credits.
R N gave it a5:
Just like every other Paul Thomas Anderson movie, this one would suck without such a big name as Daniel Day Lewis. His performance was phenomenal but lets face it, this was a movie about oil. What could be more boring than that? Maybe if they did a movie about rocks. Seriously, without the charisma of Daniel Day Lewis nobody would have ever herd of this movie and it's because of him that this movie is getting such a high rating from me. If they would have put say, Nicholas Cage in this one instead this movie would tank and be a one.
