Director Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is a masterly, unflinching examination of a consummately evil man. Daniel Plainview (via a transcendent performance by the great Daniel Day-Lewis) is, as he likes to remind those around him, an oil man:

A brutal, bloody, and gripping saga of obsession, corruption, and poisonous greed; Paul Thomas Anderson's Award Winning There Will Be Blood is a masterly, unwavering inspection of a consummately evil man whose trailblazing spirit is equalled only by his murderous ambition. In the dying years of the nineteenth century Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), a struggling silver miner, realises that true wealth lies in oil extraction. Driven by a passionate hatred for others and an intense psychological need to see competitors fail, he heads for the oil-rich land of California in a bid to manipulate and exploit the landowners of dust-worn Little Boston in to selling him their properties. Forefront of the town is self-styled `faith healer' Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) who is structuring his own sinister plan to funnel the residents' impending wealth into his self-founded church. As Plainview's empire expands, so does his obsession with the intrinsic value of power and he becomes increasingly irascible and paranoid along the way. What follows is a vindictive, ruthless, and violent chain of events as Plainview fails to deliver on promises as he pits himself against the town's perturbed and unstable charismatic teenage preacher.