10 Greatest Westerns Of The 21st Century
7. There Will Be Blood
Daniel Day-Lewis is a very special kind of actor. He takes such long breaks between – and so utterly loses himself within – each role he takes, that you instantly forget you’re watching Daniel Day-Lewis.
Not only was There Will Be Blood only Day-Lewis’s third of four films within a decade (a staggeringly small amount for an actor with such an impressive reputation), but it was also director Paul Thomas Anderson’s first film in five years.
Whether or not this lack of outsider distractions contributed to the film’s success is a matter of pure speculation, but There Will Be Blood is widely considered to be one of the finest films of the 2000s, and certainly stands up as one of the best Westerns to emerge from the 21st Century.
Based on the less ominously-titled Upton Sinclair novel Oil! There Will Be Blood is a lengthy epic about an oil-baron’s unquenchable thirst for wealth. It’s a visually arresting spectacle too, an almost intoxicating experience bolstered by Jonny Greenwood’s predictably brilliant score.