Oil. Blood. Bile. Ambition. Corruption. Hatred.

It's all spilled, messily and nakedly, in "There Will Be Blood," featuring a performance by Daniel Day-Lewis that may be the most intense and physically challenging of 2007. It's certainly the meatiest role, and he digs into it with a ferocity and meticulousness that should win him an Academy Award.

He spent two years preparing for his role as Daniel Plainview, a silver miner who becomes a self-made oil tycoon. Little by little, determination and doggedness give way to ruthlessness and misanthropy.

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'There Will Be Blood'

• Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano
• Rating: R for some violence

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In a rare moment of candor, he confides: "I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people."

The movie introduces Plainview in 1898, when he is armed with a pickax, a strong back and a ladder into the earth, as he scratches for rocks with flecks of silver. After an accident that might have killed, crippled or discouraged a lesser man, he reappears in 1902 as an oilman working with the crudest and most dangerous of devices.

By 1911, Plainview and his young son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier), are following up on a tip about oil seeping through the scrubby landscape in a place called Little Boston, Calif. They head there on the pretense of camping and hunting quail and the heart of the story kicks in as Plainview meets his match in a young preacher, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano).

Plainview will do or say whatever he can to gain the land and trust of the people who own or work it. Sunday thinks he can dance with the devil if it means getting a sizable contribution for the church he's building; when he is snubbed at an important moment, he finds a way to exact payment in a public, humiliating fashion.

Each man digs in his heels as the stakes -- money, power, their very souls -- keep being raised. Along the way, accidents and visitors change an already volatile business. When Plainview emerges from an out-of-control gusher covered with oil, his face looks like it's stained with darkened blood.

"There Will Be Blood," directed and written by Paul Thomas Anderson, is loosely based on Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel "Oil," about Southern California's early oil industry. Plainview is cast in the mold of Edward Doheny, who built an international oil empire before becoming entangled in the Teapot Dome scandal, and John Rockefeller.

The director uses Little Boston (actually an isolated West Texas ranching town) to show us the landscape of a time, an industry and a character slowly being poisoned by hostility and unhappiness.

Real-life references to companies such as Standard Oil lend a verisimilitude to the proceedings, and Anderson captures what must have been the exhaustion, isolation and sheer danger of such work.

Day-Lewis is jaw-droppingly wonderful, as always, and Dano enhances a resume that includes last year's "Little Miss Sunshine," but it's first-time actor Dillon Freasier as young H.W. who looks like he stepped out of an ancient portrait. The 10-year-old, a real-life rodeo enthusiast, has a timeless appearance and an ability to handle complex scenes that might challenge an experienced performer.

The source of Plainview's bitterness remains something of a mystery -- "I don't like to explain myself" -- although you can glean a couple of facts about his work and family roots from a very brief discussion. Or maybe his heart is almost as black as the oil he chases and covets.