The big blow behind the big spill
Deepwater Horizon
(out of 4) Starring Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, John Malkovich, Kate Hudson and Gina Rodriguez. Directed by Peter Berg. Opens Friday at major theatres. 107 minutes. 14A
Headlines and history books have recorded the unprecedented cost to marine life from the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, as black gunk gushed into a fragile environment for 87 days.
Deepwater Horizon strives to tell the largely untold human drama — and11lost lives — behind history’s biggest oil spill. Rig workers bravely fought to prevent the catastrophe, and to limit blood and destruction once it was underway.
Director Peter Berg approaches the saga as a blockbuster disaster movie, as well he might, casting with an eye to easily discerning the good guys from the bad: Mark Wahlberg and Kurt Russell as reliable blue-collar heroes; John Malkovich as the arrogant corporate villain.
The film also seeks to answer the “why” question, posed in an opening courtroom scenario, that a company as large and experienced as BP could miss or ignore signals that the Deepwater Horizon drilling complex was calamity-bound as it squatted 64 kilometres off prime Louisiana coastland. Greed and expediency are to blame and BP gets the lion’s share of it.
The viewer can’t miss myriad portents: A spurting Coke can on a kitchen table, bubbling underwater shots of an unstable drill site, an “unlucky” magenta necktie worn by a BP official and a Hitchcockian seagull that smashes into the windshield of a helicopter ferry.
Shades of Sully with that last omen. Both these current films salute the regular Joes and Janes who know how to do their jobs and just get ’em done, despite what the suits or pesky computers might say.
Wahlberg’s Mike Williams and Russell’s Jimmy Harrell are the most human elements of Berg’s multi-author screenplay, both actors effectively creating believable characters despite the film’s heavy reliance on jargon and CGI.
Williams and Harrell are veteran drillers who put the safety of their Transocean Ltd. co-workers above all else.
They object to shortcuts that might endanger lives, especially with an aging rig that has seen better days. Harrell — known to all as “Mr. Jimmy” — is very concerned that the “ceement” used to plug wells before full drilling hasn’t been adequately laid.
BP managers, led by Malkovich’s patronizing Don Vidrine, are very concerned about being 43 days behind schedule and more than $50 million over budget for advance drilling.
Vidrine is under the gun from his own corporate masters in London, as the sweat stains on his shirt indicate. After tests indicate no major concerns with initial drilling — although Harrell has his doubts — Vidrine demands workers proceed, with calamitous results.
Berg isn’t one for nuance, no matter whether he’s conscientiously telling a fact-based story like this one (or Lone Survivor, his previous teaming with Wahlberg) or just cashing a paycheque with genre garbage like Battleship.
But he makes an effort to humanize his blockbuster and to add some estrogen to this most testosterone-laden of tales. Kate Hudson’s Felicia Williams, devoted wife of Mike, and Gina Rodriguez’s can-do rig worker Andrea Fleytas both get more than just a token amount of screen time.
And when everything inevitably goes haywire, Berg — with major assists from his camera and special effects crew — demonstrates once again that he knows his way around an action scene. He can tell a big story and sell a lot of popcorn.