There Will Be Blood promises what it delivers but it delivers blood on his own terms, as Charles Foster Kane might say it. You don't get blood right away or the type of blood that you're expecting. The people who deserve to get bloodied don't always get what's coming to them while early 20th century oil tycoons have the blood of the innocent on their hands. As for righteous? Well, there is no one truly righteous--particularly in an anti-morality tale that tells the harsh reality of the industrial age triumphing over religious reverence. There Will Be Blood is good, too good for its own damned good, and possibly a film that is recklessly brilliant.

How can you describe the world as taking place in the mind of Paul Thomas Anderson? That world is a biblical farce--an ironic parable that fools the audience with all the precision of an amoral oilman who has finally found God. Though the story loosely follows the plot of the novel "Oil!" by Upton Sinclair, the movie belongs to Anderson, who wrote the screenplay and directed the film with the same manic-depressive energy he brought to Boogie Nights and Magnolias. The plot follows Daniel Plainview, a simpler miner who works his way up to filthy oilman with his morals almost in tact. Plainview seems like a man that is capable of good or evil at any time, a more carnivorous version of Charles Foster Kane, who openly admits to hating all people--especially his competitors which fuel his misanthropic fury. His young son H.W. is seemingly the only morality compass that Planview has, although an injury later tests the natural bond between father and son.

Then there is Eli Sunday, a pastoral young man who may be smarter he appears, and more psychopathic than even he realizes. Brazenly, Paul Thomas Anderson casts actor Paul Dano as both identical twins Eli and Paul, which is purposely bizarre. Are we expected to believe that these brothers are really twins or that Eli has a split personality of good and evil? Confusion notwithstanding, Eli is a fascinating character, flawed like a diamond, and probably the best character of the year with the exception of Javier Bardem's bad guy in No Country For Old Men. If you recognize Paul Dano's face from somewhere then know it's the same young actor who played the occasionally muted son from Little Miss Sunshine. I didn't even recognize Dano at first and unless you read the final credits you may not be able to tell either, since Dano speaks and speaks and speaks to no end in this movie. He is one of the more memorable on-screen villains in recent years and is being unfairly overlooked in honor of Daniel Day Lewis' performance as Daniel Plainview.

Don't get me wrong--Daniel Day Lewis plays his part flawlessly and makes a memorable anti-hero comparable to the complicated Rosebud-loving millionaire of the 1940's. He brings physical exertion to the role along with a distracting but effective accent that sounds like John Huston and Vince McMahon's love child. The only thing to say about Daniel Day Lewis is that the actor has played this type of character before, and we have seen on-screen characters comparable to this mess of a man. Daniel Day Lewis is predictably brilliant--Paul Dano is the real surprise here.

Still, it would be a jaw-dropper if the Academy Awards gives the statuette to Daniel Day Lewis (or at least, his agent's assistant's interviewer), considering the fact that this is hardly a feel-good Best Actor type of role. Not since Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas have we seen this miserable of a man in a leading role, and one that unlike most Oscar-nominees, has no little to no redemption.

It's easy to see why this film has divided so many audiences, even while sending film critics to orgasmic frenzy. It is a movie that is stunningly well directed, featuring some of the most enthralling action scenes of the year without a single pirate swinging a sword or a monster terrorizing New York. Paul Thomas Anderson directs every scene masterfully and makes the story into an unlikable but ethereally captivating sermon of the vilest of humanity, as biblically inspired as it is sacrilegious.

The film's third act is not so much disappointing as it is uproariously inappropriate, at least as to what movies are supposed to be according to all film science. The final scenes of the film alternate between curious and anti-climactic and cold Kubrickian sadism. If the Late Kubrick were still alive, I get the feeling Paul Thomas Anderson would be one of the few young directors that he would fine masochistically entertaining. There can beauty in destruction and craftsmanship in revulsion. There Will Be Blood is the most appalling and memorable film of the year, even though it comes in second place to the power of No Country For Old Men, thanks to that film's sensible narrative. (There Will Be Blood will leave you scratching your heads, that is if you resist the urge to yell at the screen)

You can't truly say that There Will Be Blood is a flawed motion picture because while it falls short of perfection, it impeccably makes a point about man's own imperfection. Perhaps the film needed somebody as creatively reckless as Paul Thomas Anderson to hit the right chord of unforgiving misanthropy--coming from the characters and from the director who has to tell a story no one should care about. I loved Juno and Into The Wild, but those were art movies that forgave their audience and left them with some feeling of comprehensible humanity. There Will Be Blood never relents or lets its audience down from harm's way. It is possibly the angriest film we've seen from the contemporary age of new filmmakers and if it's snubbed for every Oscar possible, it will the movie's own damned fault. Grade: A-