Deepwater Horizon (2016)

I will keep this short as most aspects have already been covered.

In short, this was a terrible film. It could have been fantastic, but instead of focusing on the massive political, economic and environmental issues that followed the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the film focuses solely on the life of riggers and the explosions. Lot's of explosions. There is really nothing to this film... just a load of way over the top special effects with flashes, shaky camera action, explosions and whatnot.

To make it worse, the camera is zoomed in - making it almost impossible to tell what is happening... although, it was probably just some piece of the rig blowing up.

Additionally, the dialogue was absolutely rubbish! There was no depth or substance to it - all that we were fed was how stupid BP is. To top it off, the characters all sounded like African American gangsters, even though most of the cast was white!

Finally, for some reason, the director decided to play a list of the 11 victims that lost their lives in the accident... fine, but he chose to do so at the end of the film, most of which died in the initial blast and therefore one is left wondering, "hmm, who was that again?".

If you are looking for an interesting, well-thought out and dynamic plot, turn away! This film is for people who do not have a thought of their own and just want to watch some things blow up.

Fmovies: This was a major disappointment. Despite so much of the story depending on technical details, the movie communicated next to nothing. In the early scenes on the rig, people were shouting at each other, unable to understand each other because of the background noise. However, the audience was made to suffer the same thing, having no idea what people were saying. It turns out they were asking if a "cement test" had been completed, and after some time, after they were indoors and checked with various people, they discovered that the test had not been completed. So why was the audience made to go through the nonsense of not hearing what people were saying? It seemed a ridiculous plot point to portray in such an annoying way. The significance was that the test had not been completed, not that it took a few minutes to find that fact out because it was too noisy outside for people to talk.

Then began a number of discussions about technical matters. Little effort was made to help the audience understand any of it. Even the few diagrams and supposed shots of what was happening beneath the waves were far from enlightening. I think we were just supposed to let us the technical talk slide over us as mumbo-jumbo only engineers would understand. For my part, I began to think I'd rather have been watching a PBS documentary about the incident that so that I would know exactly what happened.

Once the disaster begins, very little effort is made to continue the narrative. There's a skeleton story of a few crew members saving each other and trying to get off the rig, but the vast majority of the time we just see explosions and flying debris, over and over and over, an endless series of quick cuts, each scene lasting only a few seconds, with lots and lots of noise, of course. Despite the action and colour and noise, it all became a tiresome.

At the end of the movie we see photos of the actual people involved in the incident. None of them, of course, looked like glamorous movie stars like Marky Marky or Kate Hudson. The roles required no great acting talent. Did the producers really have to hire big-name Hollywood names to fill those roles (one of the producers was Marky Mark). It seemed to be a great opportunity to use some lesser-known actors.

VERY impressive: NO plot and highly misleading. Promulgates the idea that oil comes from dead dinosaurs and gives the impression that it was just 2 low-level BP guys on the rig that made the decision to cut costs by skipping a cement test and failing to keep routine maintenance top notch. No clear indictment of BP's criminal company culture of safety negligence for the benefit of stock dividends and executive remuneration, as established by Lord John Browne and continued by Tony Hayward.

Much urgent and heroic pushing of buttons and switches and discussing gizmos with no explanation of what is going on or how this drilling target was geologically any different from all the other offshore locations on Earth (Macondo being unlike most other drilling targets because of extremely high fluid pressure in the formation, just below the fracture threshold of the rock layers holding the oil in). So from this movie, we get the news ALL oil drilling is SUPER dangerous. The usual Hollywood negligence to script-writing. Might be meaningful to rig workers, except I have the suspicion that anyone knowledgeable would smell plenty of foni- baloni cooking.

And then the solemn photo-tribute to the 11 guys killed as the credits roll. Fine, but were they brave as they died one-by-one fighting to control the well, as the script implies? I understand that all 11 were instantly killed in the initial blast. Of course, 99.99% of the viewers will of have no idea that the Alexander Kjelland (1980) and Piper Alpha (1988) rig disasters each killed an order of magnitude more.

And the only environmental representative in the movie is one bird (who, nevertheless, gave an Oscar-worthy performance).

Deepwater Horizon fmovies. Deepwater Horizon is the first of two Peter Berg directed films this year, and if Patriots Day is anywhere near as good as this film we could be looking at quite a few nominations for Berg come February.

Deepwater Horizon tells the story of the crew members of the rig of the same name in April 2010, when the largest oil spill in U.S. history began. Berg is always a guy to count on with this type of harrowing true story. He has the skills of an action film director while also having the delicate hand for an emotionally powerful touch. And much like the recently released 'Sully', this film is a strong tale about the power of the human spirit.

Putting Battleship aside, Berg has always had a knack for directing high intensity sequences of trauma and thrills. Even taking that note into a smaller scale with Friday Night Lights, Berg is great at managing to balance intensity and emotion. Deepwater Horizon is perhaps his biggest scale film thus far, but it's also incredibly personal as well. It stars Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, Gina Rodriguez, and Kate Hudson. All of them get the opportunity to act in small intimate moments as well as physically demanding scenes.

Usually, it's those small moments that bring the emotions out of me, and that was Kate Hudson here. I feel like she hasn't gotten a lot to do since her breakout with Almost Famous, but this may be the best she's been since. She plays Wahlberg's wife, and it's simply her reactions to the devastation on the oil rig while she's at home, that really got to me. Powerful stuff.

With all that said, sometimes the high octane thrills feel to be heightened just for heightening certain situations. Berg never loses sight of the end goal here, but some 'action'-ish scenes are almost a little too much, considering how contained this story feels. It doesn't take you out of the film, but you will feel like it could have been handled differently.

Like Berg's previous film, Lone Survivor, it does a nice job of honoring those who died at the rig and the families severely affected by the tragedy. It's a powerful film with gripping performances from Hudson and the rest of the cast that will likely lead it right into the awards season come winter time.

+Berg's delicate touch

+Hudson

+Devastating

-Some heightened moments

8.6/10

In April of 2010, an offshore drilling rig named Deepwater Horizon exploded resulting in the worst oil spill in U. S. History. If you've read my previous reviews about Eddie the Eagle, Steve Jobs, The Big Short and Spotlight, you know that it's easy to get caught up in the details of how much of the story based on actual events really happened and how much was embellished or altered to make a Hollywood movie. Along the way, I have made a decision to do no research into the facts of the real-life story and just focus solely on the movie itself. I mean, the movie makes no claims to be a historically accurate documentary, so I shouldn't hold it to those standards. And this blog isn't about movies being historically accurate when they don't necessarily claim to be. It's based on two factors: how accurately the movie is portrayed by its preview, and the likelihood of the movie making it to my home collection. With that in mind, here's my review:

Mark Wahlberg plays Mike Williams who works on the drilling rig the Deepwater Horizon. But that's the third thing we learn about Williams from the preview. He's a husband and a father first. He says goodbye to his family before being flown by helicopter with his crew to the rig. All his daughter wants is a dinosaur fossil. All his wife (Kate Hudson) wants is for him to return safely. Once aboard the rig, an executive named Vidrine (John Malkovich) and others from British Petroleum are more than anxious to commence with drilling. They skip a concrete test and excuse a failed system test. They are already 43 days behind and over budget and will do whatever it takes to not fall further behind despite Mister Jimmy's (Kurt Russell) stern objections. They should have listened to Mister Jimmy because everyone's worst nightmares explode into reality.

Deepwater Horizon marks the reunion of Director Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg who collaborated on Lone Survivor three years ago. It was nominated for Oscars for Sound Mixing and Sound Editing and won the Screen Actors Guild Award for best stunt team performance. While Wahlberg has been nominated for his roles in The Fighter and The Departed, he's one of those reliable actors who makes smart choices. If you've liked one thing Wahlberg has done, odds are,you'll like them all. Most of them won't get nominated for awards, but they will all be entertaining. Berg is in the same category. He's directed some really good movies (Lone Survivor, Battleship, Hancock,The Kingdom), but none that would really break into a critic's top 50 list. Like Wahlberg, if you enjoyed one of Berg's movies, odds are, you'll at least feel you got your money's worth with all of them.

From the preview, I said that Deepwater Horizon looked action-packed and visually stunning, but that it also looked predictable with pieces of the rig falling apart or blowing up blocking every turn as Williams and the survivors try to find a way to escape. I anticipated 3 Stars but I'm bumping that up to 4.0 Stars. It was exactly as the preview said it would be and it was absolutely predictable; however, even though you knew what was coming, it was so perfectly executed, it still shocked you. From the beginning, there was no doubt about the fate of the rig as not-so-subtle clues were dropped along the way from his daughter's school presentation, to the tie of the executive, to the helicopter ride to the rig. You knew it was going to happen, but when it did, it choked the breath right out of you

"Full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing" could be a summary of this modern-age disaster movie. In 2010 the "Deepwater Horizon" drilling rig off the coast of Louisiana failed in spectacular fashion, bursting into flames and spewing millions of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico in what was the worst oil-spill in American history. Mark Wahlberg plays the well-respected electrical 'Mr fixit' Mike Williams on the rig, reporting to the Operations Manager Jimmy Harrell (Kurt Russell).

The exploratory project is way-behind and BP are not happy. Big-wigs from the company add support to Donald Vidrine, the BP site leader, in applying mounting pressure on Harrell to press on regardless without all the necessary and time-consuming tests by Schlumberger being completed. Rogue numbers in further tests are waved away as 'glitches'. A familiar story of corporate greed and pressure overriding the expert's better judgment.

When disaster strikes it strikes quickly, with some spectacular and exciting special effects that leave the audience especially hot under the collar. Female support is provided by the comely Andrea Fleytas (Gina Rodriguez), given the almost impossible job of keeping the floating bomb on station as chaos reigns about her. As an audience we are back on familiar ground here from classic Irwin Allen disaster movies such as "The Towering Inferno" and "The Poseidon Adventure". Who will make it, and who won't?

A more telling question here is "Do we care?" and unfortunately for the film, the answer is "Not really". This feels a callous thing to say when this was a real and recent event and eleven people and – as touchingly illustrated at the end of the film in tribute – many of them family men with young kids, never went home again. But film-wise, we only really get bought into the fate of Williams, whose back-story, with cute wife (Kate Hudson) and cute daughter (Stella Allen) we get to meet and sympathize with.

We get a minimalist view of Fleytas's backstory, but only enough to provide a recurring "Mustang" reference. And that's it. All the other characters are just two-dimensional "rig crew": cannon-fodder for the special effects team. The screenplay by Matthew Sand and Matthew Carnahan really doesn't deliver enough heft to get us bought in.

While the special effects are good, the sound design isn't, with much of the dialogue being incomprehensible.

All the acting is fine, with the ever-watchable John Malkovich nicely portraying the corporate head you love to hate. Wahlberg as well delivers enough range to make you forget in this "action mode" that he was also in "Ted". And Rodriguez as a junior lead holds her own against the big guns in what is a creditable performance in a big film role for her.

While "Lone Survivor"/"Battleship" director Peter Berg neatly provides an insight into life on and around rigs, and (via subtitles) descriptions of the drilling process which I found interesting, this comes down to the sum of a tense build up, an hour of frenetic disaster, and then a whimper of an ending. Where were some of the dramatic scenes of conflict in the congressional hearing that the film's opening implies might come? Where are the scenes of ecological disaster and local financial ruin to add emotional angles to the story? None of this is really exploited and the whole concoction comes across