A gripping tale from beginning to the end

By 1911, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) has made a modest fortune buying plots of land and draining them of oil. A tip-off leads him and his 10-year-old son HW (Dillon Freasier) to a rural community in the thrall of charismatic preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano).

Plainview sets up one of his rigs, tapping into a huge underground reserve of black gold, which he hopes to sell via a pipeline across the state.

But a tug of war between business and the church threatens the entire enterprise and pits Daniel against an increasingly evangelical Eli in a battle for the residents' hearts and minds. Adapted from Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil!, the film dissects the life of a charismatic trailblazer gradually corrupted by power and greed.

Technically, Paul Thomas Anderson's film takes one's breath away, establishing a mood of grim foreboding with a largely dialogue-free opening 15-minute salvo that melds Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood's avant-garde electronic score with Robert Elswit's sweeping cinematography.

Every frame is meticulously crafted, and Day-Lewis bristles with malice and self-loathing. His portrayal of a ruthless, spiritually bankrupt oilman at the turn of the 20th century is spellbinding.

Anderson's savage and unremittingly bleak 158-minute film is a test of viewers' mettle, with no escape from Plainview's annihilation of anyone threatening his ascent. The title couldn't be more apt. Blood flows freely in the virtuoso opening chapters.

However, this is a mere smattering next to the blood-soaked melodramatic denouement, when all of the pent-up tension ignites into an unintentionally funny explosion of violence.

There Will Be Blood. From Dh85 at all good DVD stores.