Review: Deepwater Horizon
"Deepwater Horizon has exploded and is on fire." Those words are a chilling understatement of the inferno that engulfed the oil rig situated in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010. The explosion claimed the lives of 11 men and resulted in the worst oil spill in American history, the effects of which continue to malinger to this day. Deepwater Horizon chronicles the hours leading to the tragedy and opts to focus on the men and one lone woman woman who struggle to save themselves and each other from almost certain death.
In many respects, Deepwater Horizon is a less philosophical companion piece to Sully, Clint Eastwood's multi-perspective recounting of the forced water landing of U.S. Airways 1549 in the middle of New York's Hudson River. Deepwater Horizon is directed by Peter Berg who, like Eastwood, champions the everyman. Berg's men and women are decent, hardworking folk, the Jacks and Dianes of this world focused on family, work and community. There's electronics experts Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg) getting some morning action with his loving wife (Kate Hudson) before he leaves her and their young daughter to work on the oil rig for three weeks. Rig worker Andrea Fleyta (Gina Rodriguez) tries to get her car started and ends up hitching a ride on the back of her boyfriend's motorcycle. Crew chief Jimmy Harrell (Kurt Russell) may be a gruff sort but he has the respect of his men, most of whom address him as Mr. Jimmy.
The trio and other crew members set off for the rig; they're accompanied by a couple of suits from parent company BP. Warning signs begin to abound. Harrell, who has helped the oil rig win the safety award for 7 years running, clashes with BP representative Donald Vidrine (John Malkovich) for not running proper safety tests. BP's cost-cutting measures have resulted in the oil rig being dubbed "The Well from Hell" by Mike and the crew. With almost 10% of the overall machinery needing repair, the rig is basically being held together by band-aids and bubblegum. Harrell insists on securing the rig before production starts pumping oil and orders a negative pressure test, the results of which Vidrine calls into question. The dials on the monitor may be going over to the red zone, but Vidrine insists that the problem is either the drill line that they're testing or the sensor picking up a trapped pocket of pressure, and says they should re-run the test on the kill line instead.
There's a great deal of technical minutiae bandied about tersely and with great authority but, while one never fully comprehends all the jargon and the various root causes, one is never in doubt that something is about go very wrong. When the mayhem begins, Berg steps on the accelerator and never lets up. Pipes burst, bolts knife through the air, bodies are flung to and fro and covered with oil, soot, debris, and sometimes flames. Harrell, in the shower when the explosion hits, is half-blinded and covered in shards from head to toe. Everyone scrambles for safety, rushing to the platforms in order to board the rescue boats that have been dispatched by the coast guard. They are threatened by the crumbling derricks and surrounded by fire. Mike, Harrell and Fleyta, meanwhile, are attempting to choke the fire by sealing the well as the fire rages on and more explosions go off.
Berg and his team convincingly illustrate the panic and terror but also the heroism and the judgments made under such high pressure. If the re-enactment feels particularly realistic, it's due to Berg and his team building parts of the rig to 85 percent scale which, coupled with the CGI, makes the relentless horror all the more vivid.
Though he has painted the characters in broad strokes, Berg ensures that audiences never lose sight of the human beings in the midst of the spectacle. His cast serve him well particularly Wahlberg, whose no-nonsense ruggedness makes Mike an effective but always plausible hero, and Rodriguez who has one big scene in which she breaks your heart a million times over. Yet perhaps no scene is more poignant than the scene in which Harrell takes roll call as the survivors exactly whose lives have been lost by the silence following their names.
Deepwater Horizon
Directed by: Peter Berg
Written by: Matthew Michael Carnahan, Michael Sand; based on the article "Deepwater Horizon's Final Hours" by David Barstow, David Rohde and Stephanie Saul
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, John Malkovich, Gina Rodriguez, Dylan O'Brien, Kate Hudson, Ethan Suplee
