K-SCORE: 68
Director: Peter Berg
Writer: Matthew Sand
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, Kate Hudson, John Malkovich, Gina Rodriguez
Spoiler Level: For those still living in 2008 or before, there are quite a few spoilers.
Deepwater Horizon followed the playbook on how to take an actual tragedy and turn it into a Hollywood movie. Thankfully they seemed to have done an adequate amount of research both on the actual disaster and the industry in general, so it’s not frustrating comparing reality to the fiction, which is the trap I usually fall into. Often in this genre, the fictional story compels me to look up the actual events and find the discrepancies and filmic liberties, which can make me frustrated with directors and writers for not trusting in their source material. Still my favorite part of Deepwater Horizon was pillaging the film’s few technical scenes for details on the true-to-life operations of oil rigs. So I’m glad this movie introduced me to cement casings on oil wells and systemic failures in safety checks before what would become the largest oil spill and possibly largest environmental disaster in US history. BP does not come off well in those scenes or afterward, really, once everything is on fire.
“The characters don’t have much to do except for getting the hell off their burning oil rig.”
As far as witnessing the dramatic fictionalization of the actual disaster… eh. It’s got the right amount of terror and chaos forced in there for the circumstances, but the film has an essential and insurmountable problem. Films, given their length, want to have a narrative progression. This thing just blew the fuck up. Not the film, the rig. Say what you will about the compelling nature of explosions, but they don’t follow an story arc. One minute everything is all… not exploded… and the next minute… very much… exploded. The characters don’t have much to do except for getting the hell off their burning oil rig. And the ones that die are the ones that were nearest to the explosion when it occurred, which is not much of surprise. Little moments of characters throwing each other in the water or in lifeboats, of people dramatically pushing red buttons and spinning hot metal wheels don’t have much impact because of the catastrophic damage and the fact that they’re not really trapped. The little details about Mark Wahlberg’s family and daughter’s presentation on what her Dad does for a living are trite and uninteresting. He and Kate Hudson do just fine in making their dialogue snappy and their relationship the right amount of healthy for this kind of disaster flick, but it doesn’t matter. In the end, the film is destined to be judged by its portrayal of the real life tragedy, which was adequate, but not amazing.
It’s not a waste of your time watching Deepwater Horizon, so long as you don’t fall down an internet wormhole regarding the inaccuracy of the bubbles that escape from the inexplicably well-lit surface of the Gulf of Mexico, but it’s just as valid to merely research the disaster. I suppose if enough people support the film, maybe it’ll defray the cost of the spill, but not by much. BP had to pay at least 40 billion for their screw-up. Eleven men and many baby dolphins paid with their lives.