Daniel Plainview reminds the audience throughout “There Will Be Blood” that he is, strictly speaking, an “oil man.” And he certainly is. He may not be humble, big-hearted or rational, but he is most definitely an oil man.

But he doesn’t even have to tell you. His obsession is evidenced by permanent oil stains on his fingers, face, teeth and hair, complete with a cap lined with rock salt from days spent digging underground.

“Blood” opens with a lone Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) in 1898 as he sends a relentless pick axe to stone in a silver mine. While the audience stirs with anxiety and discomfort, he chips away rock after rock in complete silence, save the rhythmic chime with each hit. With a broken leg, Plainview drags himself to cash in on his find – the silver that spawns his empire.

With this one scene, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson (“Boogie Nights,” “Magnolia,” “Punch Drunk Love”) tells us all we need to know about the Plainview philosophy – broken legs are inferior to the power money will bring.

Inspired by Upton Sinclair’s 1927 muckraking novel “Oil!,” Anderson depicts a contemporary Western, but rather than going yonder to pursue the American dream, Anderson asks what to do with it once the West is won.

It all becomes clear when, a few scenes later, a driller playfully smears a dab of the black stuff on his infant’s forehead. Plainview’s country is one in which men are baptized with God and industry as its two indistinguishable wheel-turners.

As a self-made man with a Machiavellian business ethic, Plainview’s quest for oil brings him to the small community of Little Boston, a rural town with “an ocean of oil” under its barren desert. With his young partner and son H.W., he convinces the town to let him dry it up for them.

Eli Sunday, a boyish, prophetic preacher of his own Church of the Third Revelation, sees through Plainview’s business plan and wants a taste for his congregation’s benefit.

But it’s not money Plainview is after. Plainview sees the world, including Sunday, as competition, where anything can be and should be bought out or out-smarted, even God.

Day-Lewis returns to the screen to deliver yet another Acadamy Award-worthy performance that will be talked about for years to come. His mustache dominates his features, and the ferocity of his facial expressions commands the most powerful of characters who share his screen.

But another surprise is Paul Dano as Sunday, better known for his role as the Nietzsche-reading aspiring pilot in “Little Miss Sunshine.” It’s Sunday’s spitfire sermons and unsettling exorcisms that battle Plainview for 20 years, resulting in an ending that now sits with those of legends like “Citizen Kane” or “Scarface” – and gives a whole new spin on milkshakes and two now infamous words.

The film’s climax mimics Plainview’s loss of sanity as it explodes with the same intensity and madness with which it opened.

Anderson’s wise reliance on the photography of Robert Elswitt and the design of Jack Fisk illustrates a bleak frontier with densely saturated colors where blood looks no different than the oil that spilled it.

Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood fuels Anderson’s slow-burning western with a score dotted with shades of Krzysztof Penderecki and anxious percussion.

Though officially released just before the end of 2007, “Blood” only saw a few “best of” lists. It’s only fair to let it slip in a few for 2008.

Alex Woodward can be reached at [email protected].