Product Details

• Actors: Daniel Day-Lewis, Barry Del Sherman, Dillon Freasier, Paul Dano, Ciarán Hinds
• Directors: Paul Thomas Anderson
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Paramount
• DVD Release Date: April 8, 2008
• Run Time: 158 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (417 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0013FXWU6
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,609 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "There Will Be Blood" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Unmistakably a shot at greatness, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood succeeds in wild, explosive ways. The film digs into nothing less than the sources of peculiarly American kinds of ambition, corruption, and industry--and makes exhilarating cinema from it all. Although inspired by Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil!, Anderson has crafted his own take on the material, focusing on a black-eyed, self-made oilman named Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), whose voracious appetite for oil turns him into a California tycoon in the early years of the 20th century. The early reels are a mesmerizing look at the getting of oil from the ground, an intensely physical process that later broadens into Plainview's equally indomitable urge to control land and power. Curious, diverting episodes accumulate during Plainview's rise: a mighty derrick fire (a bravura opportunity that Anderson, with the aid of cinematographer Robert Elswit, does not fail to meet), a visit from a long-lost brother (Kevin J. O'Connor), the ongoing involvement of Plainview's poker-faced adoptive son (Dillon Freasier). As the film progresses, it gravitates toward Plainview's rivalry with the local representative of God, a preacher named Eli Sunday (brimstone-spitting Paul Dano); religion and capitalism are thus presented not so much as opposing forces but as two sides of the same coin. And the worm in the apple here is less man's greed than his vanity. Anderson's offbeat take on all this--exemplified by the astonishing musical score by Jonny Greenwood--occasionally threatens to break the film apart, but even when it founders, it excites. As for Daniel Day-Lewis, his performance is Olivier-like in its grand scope and its attention to details of behavior; Plainview speaks in the rum-rich voice of John Huston, and squints with the wariness of Walter Huston. It's a fearsome performance, and the engine behind the film's relentless power. --Robert Horton

Product Description

A sprawling epic of family, faith, power and oil, There Will Be Blood is set on the incendiary frontier of California’s turn-of-the-century petroleum boom. The story chronicles the life and times of one Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), who transforms himself from a down-and-out silver miner raising a son on his own into a self-made oil tycoon. When 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 with his son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier), 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 (Paul Dano), 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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

184 of 192 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Long, Dark Journey into the Soul of Greed and Power, April 10, 2008

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: There Will Be Blood (DVD)

Upton Sinclair's epic novel OIL! has been successfully transformed to a film by screen writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson ('Magnolia','Boogie Nights', etc). The film is a long song (158 minutes), covering a fascinating span of time in turn of the century California when oil gained the lure of gold and transformed the land and the people into creatures of capitalism and greed and lust, and were it not for the presence of Daniel Day-Lewis' powerful performance as the man who makes it all happen, the story itself would become tiresome. It doesn't.

Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a silver miner in 1898, but soon discovers oil and begins on a mission to become wealthy, owning most of the oil fields from the mountains of central California to the Pacific Ocean. With his medicine man manner of getting people to do what he wants he pursues his greed relentlessly, disrupting small sleepy towns like Little Boston as he gains access to the wealth of the black gold. There are odd characters along the way, such as the evangelist Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) who become crushable clods beneath Plainview's boots. The progress of the story is well known to most: it is the telling of the tale in the hands of wholly credible, completely physically immersed Daniel Day-Lewis that makes the story seem new.

The film's grimy atmosphere is well presented in Robert Elswit's cinematography and the odd musical score by Jonny Greenwood is as ominous as the vantage of Plainview. Greenwood elects to weave classical works into the fabric of the film: when young HW falls deaf after an explosion the silence is partnered by one of Arvö Pärt's 'Fratres', and the film's credits are displayed over the Anne-Sophie Mutter/von Karajan recording of Brahms' Violin Concerto. Strange bedfellows, yes, but entirely appropriate to the overall mood of the film. The journey is long and depressing, but the power of Day-Lewis' performance is magic. Grady Harp, April 08

532 of 586 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great movie, disappointing DVD special edition--5 star movie, 2 star extras--go for the single disc edition, April 2, 2008

By 

WTDK "If at first the idea is not absurd, the... (My Little Blue Window, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: There Will Be Blood (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition) (DVD)

When is a "Collector's Edition" not a collector's edition? When the second disc barely has an one hour's worth of additional featurettes and other extras. "There Will Be Blood" deserved to be recognized as one of the finest films from last year. That's not to say the film is perfect but its flaws are pretty easy to overlook because of Paul Thomas Anderson's sweeping and ambitious storytelling. I'd recommend the single disc edition as the "Collector's Edition" doesn't have all that much in the way of extras. The single disc edition is really all you need even though it doesn't have ANY extras.

The packaging for this set is horrible (which I could forgive if the discs weren't scratched up in the process). How did this get past the marketing department at Paramount?


"There Will Be Blood" based on Upton Sinclair's novel OIL! gives us two portraits of two very different men both ruled by their own obsession--Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis in his Oscar winning role who seems to be channeling John Huston from the film "Chinatown")an oil man who in spite of his impressive skills as a smooth talking salesman, doesn't like people very much (aside from his son H.W. which he uses to help sell people that his is "a family business") and Eli Sunday (Paul Dano)a smooth talking healer and leader of the Church of the Third Relevation. Both men want wealth and power for Plainview its a means to escape. While Sunday sees the oil leaking out of the ground of his father's ranch to gather a flock, reach out with his message and, in turn, gain the power that he believes he deserves. The two men don't get along from the moment they meet--Eli is on to Daniel's "plain speaking" way of doing business and getting something for next to nothing and Daniel believes that Eli is a charlatan. In their own way each is a hard nosed uncompromising businessman with visions that don't mesh.

The DVD:

Robert Elswit's cinematography deservedly won an Oscar for the film and while the DVD transfer looks good, the night sequences are a bit murky and dark. Detail overall is pretty good with a color scheme that accurately captures the theatrical look of the film.

Audio sounds terrific nicely reproducing Johnny Greenwood's score.

There are no extras on the first disc which has a menu as plain as Daniel's view of the world. The second disc features a vintage silent featurette that runs about 27 minutes and uses Greenwood's score to accompany it. It tells the "story" of oil and shows us how oilmen hunted for it and brought it to market.

We also get "15 Minutes" a collection of vintage stills from the era taken around oil sites, behind-the-scenes footage and various clips showing all the work that Anderson and his crew put into researching the film. It's a silent segment accompanied by music and lasts, yep, just over 15 minutes.

Next up we two deleted scenes that last nearly ten minutes. Under three minutes "Dallies Gone Wild" is an alternate take of the restaurant scene involving Daniel, his son H.W. and employees of Standard Oil.


We also get the teaser for the film and the original theatrical trailer both of which remind me of the lost art of crafting a great trailer that will pull in an audience without giving away too much. All things considered, this is a disappointing "Collector's Edition" even with the awkward collectable packaging that is included (where the discs slide inside) and would be prone to damage with time.

Conclusion: A powerful, terrific film and one of the ten best from 2007, "There Will Be Blood" appears in a disappointing special edition from Paramount. The film looks fine and the soundtrack is brilliantly rendered which should be enough to get fans to purchase the single disc DVD and that's what I would recommend.

The extras on disc two of the "Collector's Edition" are slim pickings to say the least. It's as if Paramount rushed to pull this material together in light of the Academy Award nominations and wins the film scored. They are very disappointing for a two disc edition and I can't strongly recommend the two disc edition based on this. If you just want the film, go for the single disc edition and wait to see what the Blu-ray comes packs in the way of special features.

A reminder...Voting at amazon.com is about whether or not the review helped you decide to purchase the product NOT about whether or not you agree with the reviewer. That's what the comments section is designed for. If you have seen the movie and didn't like it, write a review.

22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Another one impossible to rate, October 1, 2008

By 

Dr. Christopher Coleman (HONG KONG) - See all my reviews

This review is from: There Will Be Blood (DVD)

There Will Be Blood is another one of those movies that you will either love or hate. Daniel Day Lewis is fantastic in this extensive character study; the acting in general was superb. But the pacing was very peculiar--long passages occur when nothing much happens; and the music was overwhelming more than a few times, literally covering the dialogue. I am a composer myself, and I appreciated the composer's skill, but I think the sound engineer should never work in Hollywood again. All in all, the reviewer below who described this as an "Oily Citizen Kane" was pretty close to the mark, although this movie was more violent. All in all, I was left with too much of a sense that the director was trying too hard to create a film that would last for all time. To my mind, a somewhat more direct method would have made a better film. But perhaps it's me.