10 Movies Where You Want The Villain To Win

Quentin Tarantino accurately surmised what makes cantankerous oilman Daniel Plainview so compelling in a 2009 Sky Cinema interview. The 15-minute opening is nonverbal and utterly mesmerising. Watching this man break his leg in the pursuit of oil, only to crawl on his belly for many miles to receive help and reimbursement, shows us Mr Plainview is no ordinary man, but one of singular grit and determination.

Cleverly placing this sequence at the beginning of the film gives, as Tarantino puts it, gives the character a carte blanche for the bottomless pit of greed and ambition that follows. It does help that Daniel Day-Lewis is giving an arguable career-best performance here, no small feat given the British-Irish actor has rarely put a foot wrong in his whole career.

Whether antagonising his own deaf son, screwing over an entire town or straight-up murdering Paul Dano’s exuberant priest, Plainview stops at nothing to thrust himself on the throne of an oil-soaked empire. No matter how many milk shakes end up being drunk, it’s truly compelling stuff to witness, a fact further compounded by the greatest actor of a generation firing on all cylinders.