Movie Reviews

Melinda Sue Gordon / Paramount Vantage

Review in a Hurry:  Daniel Day-Lewis offers a fascinating performance as a California oilman at the turn of the century (no, the last century). Set in a landscape filled with rich detail, his drive to succeed at any cost makes for a story that's both vicious and compelling.

The Bigger Picture:  Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) is one tough son of a bitch. We first see him as a silver miner who drags himself across the desert with a broken leg to sell a few chunks of rock. Played totally without dialogue, it serves as a giant billboard telling the world, This is a man with whom you do not wish to screw.

But when Plainview's rich, cultured voice rolls out, he sounds like a gentleman. After picking up a son somewhere and switching to the oil business, Plainview goes from town to town in central California, trying to convince ranchers and farmers to let him drill on their lands. Based on Upton Sinclair's novel Oil!, it's doubtful the old muckraker ever intended his protagonist to be this sympathetic and engaging.

Plainview is tipped to a huge strike in a town called Little Boston by the runaway son of a religious goat farmer. He buys out nearly the entire town with the help of the farmer's other son, a vicious little snot named Eli Sunday who wraps himself in the clothes of a preacher (both sons are played by Paul Dano).

There are obstacles in Plainview's way, of course. But it's hard to take any of them too seriously. We get a few hints about his past when a man claiming to be his long-lost half-brother shows up, and there are cracks in his composure when his son is injured by an explosion. None of it really matters. Plainview is a force of nature. By the end of the movie—which seems abrupt, despite the two-and-a-half hour running time—we know there's only one thing that can destroy Plainview: himself.

The 180—a Second Opinion:  Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia) creates a portrait reminiscent of great '70s westerns like Jeremiah Johnson, slowly and methodically, with a minimum of dialogue. Everything is shown, and almost nothing is told. So, anyone expecting giant robots, zombies or music-video montages should just keep walking.