Review of "There Will Be Blood" by

Based on Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil!", this is the story of an ambitious man named Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) who pulls himself up by his bootstraps to become an oil tycoon in the 1920's. It's the early days of oil when the derricks were made from wood, and the men worked like dogs to extract the precious fluid from the dry, dusty plains of Texas. Plainview, like his name, is a soft-spoken man driven to succeed where other men would have given up. He has little regard for his long-lost ne'er-do-well brother, who comes seeking his brother's help. Nor does this reserved widower show much overt affection for his adopted son. And when a fire-and-brimstone preacher starts to oppose him, we see Plainview's single-minded determination. Daniel Day Lewis is superb in this story of grit and greed in the Texas oilfields.