The reviews are strongly positive, with praise centred on Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance as Daniel Plainview and Paul Thomas Anderson’s treatment of greed, power and American ambition. Critics repeatedly single out the opening sequence, finding its largely wordless storytelling a forceful introduction to Plainview’s character. Jonny Greenwood’s score also draws praise, while Anderson’s command of scale allows the film to work as both a close character study and a broader account of wealth pursued without moral restraint.
The differences are chiefly matters of enthusiasm rather than outright dissent, and the reservations cluster around the later storytelling. The Skinny admires the first hour but finds narrative gaps thereafter; Den of Geek likewise questions the later stretch and the final scene. Eye for Film raises a separate concern about the simplicity of the religious opposition, though treats it as minor: none of these reservations overturns the critics’ broadly favourable view.