DIGGING DEEP
Predictable disaster flick works thanks to slick acting, filmmaking
Deepwater Horizon does very little that is new or improved when compared to past movies about real-life disasters. But it goes through the motions with such certainty and skill that it’s hard to fault the film for being what it is, and for doing it well. Might as well fault a drill for digging a perfect hole.
Of course, the drill at the centre of this tale doesn’t drill a perfect hole, and therein lies the drama. As the film opens, the Deepwater Horizon — a semi-submersible rig positioned some 70 kilometres off the coast of Louisiana — is running over budget and behind schedule on its exploratory work for oil giant BP.
In case you missed it, an explosion and fire in 2010 killed 11 of the rig’s 126 crew and unleashed a catastrophic oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico. Director Peter Berg (Lone Survivor and, crucially, Battleship) gives us enough ironic foreshadowing — everything from an ominous necktie to a balky motor car — to sink a lesser movie.
But lesser movies don’t feature Mark Wahlberg (Lone Survivor and, crucially, The Perfect Storm) as Mike Williams, an electronics technician well aware of Deepwater’s operational deficiencies, but determined to make the best of them. They don’t include Kurt Russell (The Hateful Eight and, crucially, Poseidon) as Jimmy Harrell, the rig’s respected boss, who — you can’t make this stuff up — received an award for safety mere hours before everything went to hell. And they don’t give you Gina Rodriguez as bridge officer Andrea Fleytas.
Lesser movies also tend to get to the action a little more quickly. But Deepwater Horizon holds off on the mayhem for almost an hour, until the tension is as thick as crude oil and we’ve been primed to understand that any kind of bubbling on the ocean floor, more than a kilometre beneath the rig, is a Very Bad Thing.
We’ve also been introduced to the film’s villain, a BP executive played by John Malkovich, whose silky, menacing delivery is put to good use here. In this role, he’s arguing that a crucial pressure test shows there’s no need to fear a disastrous blowout — and in his defence he seems to know what he’s talking about, to the point where Jimmy decides to hit the showers and call it a day. Mike, however, gets the last word when he notes: “Hope ain’t a tactic.”
The movie credits four writers, two of whom wrote a lengthy New York Times article that begins: “The worst of the explosions gutted the Deepwater Horizon stem to stern.” They handle the dialogue easily — anything about cement tests that you can’t quite understand isn’t important — and they hand the multiple roles of concerned-spouses-on-shore to Kate Hudson (Russell’s stepdaughter), who steps up admirably.
But most of the action takes place on the rig itself, which quickly starts to resemble one of those doomed submarine dramas, all popping rivets and rushing water. And while the BP suits get the worst of the blame, the filmmakers also put forth the hypothesis — found in the Times article as well — that hubris from multiple parties was also accountable for the disaster. And that simple acts of bravery stopped it from being even worse. Showing these twin forces in opposition are what movies like this do best.