(From our guest critic, the Movie Knight): Based on the true story on what will later be known as the BP oil disaster, Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg) is preparing to leave his family again for a 3-week working stint aboard the Deepwater Horizon, an offshore oil drilling rig stationed off the state of Louisiana. He is also joined by his supervisor, Jimmy Harrell (Kurt Russell) and rig pilot Andrea Fleytas (Gina Rodriguez).
Awaiting them on the rig and aside from the crew, are board members of the BP corporation. Their biggest concern is to get the drilling going so they can start making money off this site, while the crew has only safety on their minds. Unfortunately, the BP people win out and disaster strikes.
While this is based on a true story it feels like a paint by the numbers disaster flick. It has an early ‘The Perfect Storm’ vibe to it along with plenty of foreshowing (beginning with a can of soda). It is filled with the stereotype characters we are used to seeing in this kind of movie. We have our hero…who eventually finds a time to say, “I WILL see my wife and daughter again!”; it has the grizzled, tough-as-nails-boss, the greedy bureaucrat, the person who boldly sacrifices his life, and finally… the worried wife sitting at home.
You may not understand everything that is going on in the picture. Don’t worry, the filmmakers put up plenty of titles throughout explaining the nature of how the rig and mechanics works and information on the site. Whatever they don’t put up in titles, the characters will talk about to fill in the rest.
Recently, the movie “Sully” came out and while we all knew the ending, it still managed to create tension in the movie. Peter Berg is a talented director, who most recently helmed Wahlberg in Lone Survivor, yet in this case no tension is ever created. The movie sometimes feels like we are watching a recreation scene from a documentary.
1.5 Tiaras