In "...Blood", Upton Sinclair's socialist agenda has been all but obliterated by Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day Lewis. While his 'Oil' was more about the plight of oilfield workers and him using that as a vehicle for pushing his views against capitalism much like the horror faced by the workers in meatpacking industry in Chicago was used in his more famous work 'The Jungle' greatly diluting the impact and seriousness of the work.

Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood" is more a character sketch than a social commentary of any sort. There really isn't much in terms of a plot or even a theme. It is mostly about Daniel Dey Lewis's Daniel Plainview and a bit about his troubled relationship with his son H.W. Plainview. There is also Paul Dano (the troubled teen from Little Miss Sunshine) who is another powerful and strange character that tries to achieve some counter-balance to Daniel Plainview and often succeeds. There are some brilliant scenes between these two actors and Dano is certainly up to the task. (Do we have another Johnny Depp in the making?)

Plainview is a self-made oil-man who rises from the filth of the land slowly but surely to build a fortune for himself mostly built on hard work and a harder soul.

Daniel Day Lewis's over the top performance just won him his 2nd best actor nod. Many have called his performance 'brutal' and his character scary and weird. I somehow found the character quite realistic. This is is early 20th century American you are talking about. The civil war has just gotten over and more than half the population can still not vote. It is the birth of American capitalism and like any such natural birth it is messy, difficult and there is, for sure, blood.