Deepwater Horizon depicts the events leading up to and during what
would eventually become the worst oil spill in the history of the
United States, where the titular drilling rig, the largest in the
world at the time, would explode under massive amounts of pressure in
the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven of the 126 people on board, just 52
miles off of the coast of Venice, Louisiana, on April 20, 2010. A
burst of methane gas trapped over three miles below the ocean surface
blast up the well, eventually blowing out on the rig, where oil would
continue to rush into the Gulf for nearly three months straight.
In addition to the actual cataclysmic event, Deepwater Horizon
shows many of the ways in which the accident could have and should
have been prevented. The story showcases how corners had been cut in
terms of safety precautions to step up the process that had been
running 43 days behind schedule. There's a good deal of expository
information to cover so that laymen in the audiences will understand
the basics of deep sea oil exploration and fundamental physics when it comes
to how pressure can affect the process along the way. Experts in the
area will feel that the film is a rudimentary approach to a highly
technical process, but the filmmakers do succeed in making the
elaborate procedures understandable enough to follow along while they
happen.
Mark Wahlberg (Daddy's
Home, Ted 2) stars as Mike Williams, the chief
electronics technician working for Transocean, who leaves his adorcing
wife (Hudson, Kung Fu Panda 3)
and young daughter behing for a three-week stint on the rig that
is currently under lease by giant petroleum corporation, British
Petroleum (BP). Despite the fact that BP suits are on site to present
the crew chief, Jimmy Harrell (Russell, The
Hateful Eight), with a safety award, the rig is
encountering many niggling issues that are preventing them from
staying on schedule. The BP agents downplay these issues, wanting the
rig workers to get to what they really need to do: extract petroleum
and make the company lots of money in the process, but Jimmy is the
man in charge, and won't proceed unless it's safe for his men to do
so. Red flags are there, but the corporate interests prevail,
ultimately resulting in full steam ahead, and, of course, tragedy
strikes, resulting in massive explosions, a rain of fire, and crushing
equipment threatening the lives of everyone on board the rig.
It takes approximately half of the movie before the terrifying events
begin happening, allowing director Peter Berg (Lone
Survivor, Battleship) and the screenwriters
Matthew Sand (Ninja Assassin) and Matthew Michael Carnahan (World
War Z, State of Play) a chance to build up a few
of the main characters, as well as to set the table for the impending
tragedy that we all know is sure to follow, especially in the ways we
see how the disaster might have been prevented had profit not been the
primary consideration from the higher-ups overseeing the project (BP will no doubt not be happy with the portrayal of their company on any
level, especially in John Malkovich's (Zoolander
2) particularly slimy turn as
real-life BP executive Donald Vidrine, shown, probably fictitiously,
as a careless corporate stooge as weasely as the one portrayed by Paul
Reiser in Aliens). The editing is tight, the sound design a key
component to deliver atmosphere in a dark and dangerous vessel, feeling
very much like a straightforward disaster movie, though without some
of the soapier elements that tend to make many that take the same
approach sag. With plenty of American flags captured on the visible
frame, which is a bit misguided given that it isn't a patriotic movie
from a national service standpoint, there's a callback to the kinds of
blue-collar disaster flicks of the 1990s from the likes of Michael Bay
and Roland Emmerich.
Interesting is Berg's decision to make
this a personal film for the people affected by the disaster,
eschewing an epilogue in which we see how the disaster affected a
great many people in the Gulf, as well as much of the fallout that
took place in the media and in government hearings regarding the
matter, save for a couple of clips of the real-life survivors, and a
few words written on the screen to let us know that virtually no one
took blame for the disaster from a legal standpoint. While it does
play like an an action-thriller a good part of the time, Berg keeps
the tone respectful, always putting the human loss in the tragedy
first and foremost in our minds as we witness the disparaging results
of profit-first corporate decision-making run amok.
While it
likely plays broader than the actual situation, and takes great
liberties on the part of the story to deliver movie foreshadowing and
actos of action-adventure heroism, as a piece of so-called
entertainment surrounding a real-life tragedy, Berg manages to deliver
something that's engaging enough to watch as a film to satify
audiences looking for pure escapist entertainment, while still
maintaining enough homage to the people that were the most deeply
affected by the tragedy, especially those who would not make it out of
the blowout alive. There are a lot of moving parts at play, but unlike
the real-life Deepwater Horizon, its cinematic namesake delivers
what's intended without much of a hitch.
