DVD Review: Deepwater Horizon
All I knew about the April 20, 2010 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig was what I saw on the news and read on twitter. The news had images of an oil rig engulfed in flames. Twitter was blaming BP for pouting the worlds oceans with the biggest oil spill ever. And that was basically it. Everyone was mad at BP and I don’t think many people even gave much of a thought for what the people on Deepwater Horizon went through.
Now thanks to director Peter Berg we get to go a little deeper into the story, one that still lays blame squarely on BP for their cost cutting over safety. It’s a story from the perspective of primarily one man, engineer Michael “Mike” Williams (Mark Wahlberg). On arriving back to the rig, Mike discoverers that BP have sent home the workers who were supposed to pour concrete before the concrete was tested to make sure the drilling rig was secure. With this step skipped Mike’s boss Jimmy insists on running another test which comes back inconclusive, not being able to satisfy the BP management, they are forced to begin the process of making the rig secure.
This is when the shit hits the fan.
Now, I know there is going to be a hell of a lot of artistic licence when telling a story like this, but I am often surprised at how well a film can tell a gripping story about an event that we all know about. And gripping it is. I mean you just know something bad is going to happen so I guess much of the early tension is just the looking for when the train wreak is going to happen.
But it’s not as simple as bang and the rig blows up, there are many threads to unravel and the human side of the disaster to bring to the fore. And the fact that there were heroes as well as villains on the Deepwater Horizon that day.
Deepwater Horizon is a mesmerizing and entertaining look at a train wreak slowly unfolding, wrapped in the beautiful eye candy of special effects, that delivered a powerful and emotional story that few of us would have considered when we first heard the name Deepwater Horizon.
Rating: M Offensive language.
FILMGUIDE rating:
