When I first saw the trailer for this movie, I really had no idea what to expect. I am a huge Daniel Day-Lewis fan, and have been since Last of the Mohicans (”I will find you!”), and when I saw that he was in this movie, and I heard his voice…I guess I was initially expecting some sort of old “western” style Gangs of New York movie. I tagged it as a movie that would be slow going at first, introducing characters, learning about back stories through flashbacks, and one that would ultimately be building up to a huge showdown in the end where Daniel Day-Lewis would heroically, and violently, be killed in some artistic and graphic way…

…I’m not going to say if I was right or not and spoil the movie, but let’s just say that Daniel Day-Lewis has moved up to my Top 3 Actors list after this performance. I absolutely fell in love with his character. He’s a selfish and greedy oil business man who is out to own EVERY drop of oil and spend the money he gets from his every drop of oil on new ways to discover how to obtain even MORE drops of oil. He stops at nothing, at no one, and for no reason in attaining everything he wants…which is everything. His lust and greed drive who he is, it’s his identity, “I’m an oil man” is how he introduces himself, even the color of his skin is stained by the very oil that he so feverishly pursues. I’ve never seen a man, actor, or character in a movie, demand and command so much intimidation by just his voice. Everything revolves around him, he is the epicenter of this oil-filled world out in West Texas, and to everyone else, in order to get to the oil, you have to come through him…well, that’s what he wanted it to be like anyway.

Daniel Day-Lewis so brilliantly plays this character where throughout the movie, at different times, I found myself rooting for him to succeed, cursing his very existence as a character, tearing up for his failures, and at the end, wondering why I cared about him at all. His portrayal was nothing short of genius. Though at times I could copy and paste his portrayal of Bill “The Butcher” Cutting in Gangs of New York onto Daniel Plainview and it might match up pretty close, the difference in Daniel Plainview versus Bill, is that Daniel cares for no one, not even family, when it comes to getting what he wants. His pride, his arrogance, his shame, all of it was wrapped up in trying to get that next oil discovery…ultimately, that next dollar.

To quote one of my friends who I saw the movie with, “He was a killer before he ever became a killer.” The dialogue between the characters, especially from Daniel’s character to Paul Dano’s character Eli Sunday, will leave you wounded in the heart. I’ve never heard dialogue in movies like this. I was literally scared of the words. They were frighteningly real and penetrated you as they were hurled from character to character. At times, I felt like I was in the room with them and could feel the tension crawling around my skin like little pokey ants. It’s a feeling that I’ve never felt before from a movie…and I loved it.

To say that the score in this movie was good is the understatement of the century. In my opinion, a great score in a movie is one that creates itself as an actual character. When the score becomes an integral part of the movie, not just a pretty or thrilling decoration that you move your head to, that’s when it becomes monumental. The music in this movie (if it could be called that, at times it was just eerily sounding violins that scratched my eyes audibly) takes on a personality of its own and forces its way to the front of your mind as you try and concentrate on the dialogue and character, yet can’t figure out why all that you hear is the plickety-pluck of an old scary violin. I will never hear a violin again and not remember the images that flashed across my mind when the violins opened the movie…carrying us to the top of the peak, in its loudest volume, and leaving us there to figure out how to get down. Even now, I am still moved by the reminiscing sounds that are lingering in my memory of the movie’s score.

Shot mostly in West Texas, the landscape of the movie is desolate, dry, and well, West Texas. This movie won’t be awarded nor remembered for its cinematography or use of special new cameras, though I was very moved by just how empty it all was, which I think was a great symbol for what Daniel Plainview really felt…emptiness. Nothing about this movie will leave you smiling or feeling good about yourself, it’s not one of those movies. I do think we can take away the passion that Daniel had for his business and apply that to today’s life, but this is not a message movie. It is a gritty, real, raw, unadulterated, scary, violent, beautiful, haunting look at what greed looks like. What forms greed can take, and what monsters are born out of greed…

If this doesn’t win Best Picture at the Oscars or Daniel Day-Lewis doesn’t win for Best Actor, I will forever be boycotting the Oscars.

Content Warning: This movie is rated R for violence and some foul language, and for, in my opinion the only reason why it’s an R, intense imagery and situations that you do not want youth or kids seeing. The intensity alone deserves an R, but that coupled with how raw and unadulterated the action is, definitely makes it worth and R rating.

Bottom line, you will not forget it…and neither will I.