DEEPWATER HORIZON – Review

It’s still early in “end of the year awards season”, but Hollywood is rolling out another “ripped from the headlines” blockbuster. This month we’ve viewed actors portraying Edward Snowden and Captain Chesley Sullenberg and now another cast is taking on roles based on real folks. Yes, plural, since, while those earlier films really had a single focus, spelled out in the title, this one has a disaster associated with its title locale. I know SULLY had disaster dream sequences, but the story really concerned a near-catastrophe, a tragedy averted. Not so this time out. This tale concerns the loss of eleven souls, only six years ago, on DEEPWATER HORIZON.

The film begins with the audio of actual courtroom testimony embellishing a black screen. The visuals start on a cool morning in April of 2010. Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg) is having a final breakfast with his wife Felicia (Kate Hudson) and ten year-old daughter Sydney (Stella Allen) before he begins a three-week stint on the Deepwater Horizon mobile offshore drilling rig 41 miles off the Louisiana Coast. Sydney gives her pop a preview of the presentation she’ll deliver to her class later that day, a “show and tell” about his job. We then meet DH navigator Andrea Fleytas (Gina Rodriguez) as she grabs a ride to the airport. There she and Mike meet safety supervisor Jimmy Harrell (Kurt Russell) as they board a multi-passenger helicopter transport bound for the rig. After landing, Harrell is surprised to see another crew heading out without completing an inspection of the stability of the “mud”(concrete shot down the hole drilled into the sea flow, which caps the oil before the pumps arrive). He gives a list of concerns to his bosses, but BP liaison Vidrine (John Malkovich) is more worried about going over budget and making a fast-approaching deadline. Harrell convinces them to do a pressure test on the “drill” line and the “kill” line. When said test is conducted, the pressure gauges hit triple digits until Harrell’s fears prove true. A geyser of seawater erupts through the rig followed by a stream of concrete mud, methane gas, and water. Fiery explosions engulf the rig as the workers try to make their way to the life boats and meet up with Coast Guard rescue teams, along with the tanker, before the massive structure collapse into the sea.

Wahlberg, much as in his recent Transformers gig, is in affable “average Joe” mode. He’s the devoted hubby and nurturing papa is those opening scenes, then convincingly flips the switch to “working stiff”, a guy who does his job, exchanges zinger with his crew, and tolerates those clueless “pencil-pushers”. Plus he gives us some “action hero” stuff in the film’s final half, combining grit and determination while letting us see the fear bubbling up in his eyes, a panic that must be clamped down. Russell is his macho “man-in-arms”, taking no “guff”, and never backing down to those “shirt and tie” guys (even making one of them remove his purple tie, an unlucky color). Harrell is a gruff, lovable father-figure to all the crew and Russell conveys a real warmth as he interacts with them all. He seems to be making a seamless transition from leading man to colorful character actor with this role cementing this status and making us look forward to a rumored similar part in the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel. Russell has a great adversary in the always entertaining Malkovich as the villainous Vidrine whose passive/aggressive demeanor suggests John M’s James Carvelle’s SNL impression mixed with OFFICE SPACE’s dreaded Lumbergh with a dash of Cajun spice. Hudson has an easy flirty rapport with Wahlberg in the opening scenes which continues with their Skype conversation until she must assume an all too familiar role as “worried woman back home, on the phone” , much like Laura Linney in SULLY and Sienna Miller in AMERICAN SNIPER. Rodriguez begins her character Andrea as a tough-talking pro, but is unfortunately regulated to panicked “damsel-in-distress” by the final act.

In his second collaboration with Wahlberg (the first was 2013’s LONE SURVIVOR), director Peter Berg presents an interesting unglorified look at guys “just doing their jobs”, even giving us a grade-school lesson to explain its complexities, but he begins to show his hand early and often (yes, we know it really happened). Impending doom is telegraphed by the shots tracking the drill lines and ominous bubbling emitting from the ocean floor. The oil company exec often seem to be echoing the mayor of Amity Island, dismissing Harrell’s worries while eating warm chocolate chip cookies at their desk (the guys below toil in grime and sweat). Them dang one percenters! When the, ahem, “stuff’ goes down, the film becomes a demo for theatre state of the art sound systems, full of extreme sound and fury. These characters we’ve cared about, become rag dolls to be tossed about, buffeted by collapsing steel, pelted by mud, and dodging fireballs in an overwrought uneven blend of THE TOWERING INFERNO and THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (with a bit of THE FINEST HOURS and THE PERFECT STORM). By invoking those popcorn flicks, the true tragedy is almost trivialized in the need for “destruction porn”. Shrapnel whizzes past figures we can barely see in the dark hallways, battering our senses almost to submission. Berg wants this be a big action adventure, short-changing and simplifying the real issues of corporate neglect and ecological consequence. The real life men and woman are worthy of honor, but this dramatization values pyrotechnics over real emotions. Those few days in April 2010 are a gripping tale of survival, a compelling one that DEEPWATER HORIZON just doesn’t deliver.

2 Out of 5