Deepwater Horizon takes us inside the events that led to the April 20, 2010 American ecological disaster commonly referred to as “The BP Oil Spill.” We follow events from the perspective of the top-ranking engineers, techs, and executives aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, which was stationed offshore of the Louisana coast. Our main guide is one Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg), a safety inspector who arrives on Deepwater Horizon the day of the disaster.
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Upon arriving on the rig, Mike and rig operator “Mr. Jimmy” (Kurt Russell) immediately spot something wrong: BP executive Donald Vidrine (John Malkovich) has bypassed a routine inspection of the rigs drilling system as a cost-saving measure for the company. When Mr. Jimmy insists on backup tests being performed, it starts a back-and-forth with the company execs that inevitably leads to corners being cut, at great cost to the people on the rig, and the entire Louisiana coastline.
But before the environmental fallout, media storm, and legal consequences all came about, the men and women aboard Deepwater Horizon had to make it out of the hellish inferno alive.
Director Peter Berg has left big-budget franchise films like Hancock and Battleship behind, and thankfully settled into a niche of creating gripping action-thrillers about real-life modern Americana heroes, whether they are football players (Friday Night Lights), soldiers (Lone Survivor), or in this case, the red-blooded, blue-collar, roughneck types aboard an oil rig. Berg has proven to have keen eye for not just Americana heroes, but tales of conquering adversity that stoke the fires of that classic American pride; Deepwater Horizon is something more of a mixed bag on that front (given our associations with the event at its center), but it nonetheless hits the mark as an gripping and compelling disaster movie experience.
Visually, Berg is often compared/confused with the likes of Michael Bay, and rightly so. In terms of visual composition (particularly capturing movement and action), Berg distills a lot of best elements of Bay, while still retaining a much more reverent eye for iconography and visual metaphor. Deepwater Horizon brings Berg back to the sea, but thankfully, this film is much tighter and well composed than Battleship. Most of the action takes place on the rig, and Berg is excellent at simultaneously conveying the massive size of the environment (which then becomes a massive death-trap), as well as the claustrophobic confines of that environment.
Cinematographer Enrique Chediak (28 Weeks Later, 127 Hours) does a fantastic job of turning the third act (the massive explosion and inferno aboard Deepwater Horizon) into a visual feast of vibrant darkness and raging flames. There’s a bit of some CGI “cut scene” effect during sweeping shots of the rig, or insight shots at pieces of infrastructure or machinery failing, but other than that, the composition of the visuals, combined with Berg’s over-the-shoulder guerilla style of filming action, creates a pretty captivating and exciting movie experience.
The script by Matthew Michael Carnahan (The Kingdom, World War Z) and Matthew Sand (Ninja Assassin) is a lean, tightly paced, and focused script that makes great efficient use of its character ensemble. We get a broad enough picture of the various main characters, supporting characters, and various teams and camps within the Deepwater Horizon family, while never losing focus on who to care about, or losing the momentum of the story. What’s especially surprising is how the screenwriters are able to evoke so much tension out of the first two-thirds of the story, which ostensibly consist of people in a room arguing about company procedures. By turning the natural root causes behind the disaster into a sort of predatory character in the film, scenes that would otherwise just be dialogue filled with technical jargon become moments of heart-wrenching dramatic irony.
Deepwater Horizon uses our familiarity with the BP Oil Spill as a powerful source of resonance, while still being just as effective at being a tense thrill ride for any viewer not already familiar with the event. For his part, Berg manages to find the through line to humanizing those at the center of the disaster, without excusing the disaster and its human causes; however, for some viewers the focus on championing the human struggle over the effect on the environment may be a hang-up. That’s not to say the film ignores the issue completely (there’s a great scene involving an oil-covered pelican that speaks volumes), but for some people, it just might not be enough of a finger-wag at what remains the worst ecological disaster in US history.
The cast is a great ensemble of talent that helps sell the human side of things. Mark Wahlberg brings his trademark swagger and smart-talking charm to another leading man role – doubling down on his Transformers 4 performance by once again not bothering to put on an accent more fitting for the region (especially weird since the film is bookended by the thick drawl of the real Mike Williams). All in all, though, Wahlberg makes Mike into a lead character that’s likeable and worth caring about, showing good chemistry and banter with co-star Kate Hudson, who plays his wife.
Kurt Russell is all trademark no-nonsense gruffness (and thick facial hair) as “Mr. Jimmy,” and watching him and John Malkovich square-off in some scenes is something dynamic to watch, as the two veteran actors invoke classic themes of “blue collar vs. white collar values” that help elevate the subtext of the material. Other actors like Dylan O’Brien (Maze Runner) and Ethan Suplee (Wolf of Wall Street) do well in creating supporting characters worth caring about, with Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez especially standing out as Deepwater Horizon’s young engineer, Andrea.
All in all, Deepwater Horizon is a good B-movie disaster thriller from Peter Berg. It may not be as powerful as Lone Survivor, but for viewers looking for that classic heart-pumping thrill of a good disaster movie, this film will deliver.
Deepwater Horizon will be in theaters on September 30, it is 107 minutes long and is Rated PG-13 for prolonged intense disaster sequences and related disturbing images, and brief strong language.
