Deepwater Horizon

Cert: 12A. Now showing. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon collapse remains one of the most destructive industrial calamities in history and the largest oil spill of its kind to boot. After the rig went up in flames (claiming 11 lives), the well continued to pump billions of litres of oil into the Gulf of Mexico until finally capped almost three months later.

A New York Times investigative article detailing the events forms the bedrock for this disaster drama from Peter Berg (Hancock, Battleship), and the results are, for the most part, refreshingly sophisticated for a kaboom-heavy actioner starring Mark Wahlberg.

Wahlberg tones down the blue-collar muscularity he usually ploughs to play electrical technician Mike Williams, enjoying one last morning of domestic bliss with his wife (Kate Hudson) and daughter before a three-week stint on the doomed platform. He, Kurt Russell’s rig chief and Gina Rodriguez’s bridge officer helicopter out to this petroleum Skull Island to discover a concrete test has been called off and John Malkovich’s slithering BP supervisor making light of it.

The feeling of pressure building both within the characters as well as 10km below on the seabed is sharpened gradually to an excruciating crescendo. The dialogue is excellent, immersing you in the reality rather than spoon-feeding you a dummy’s guide. When everything comes to the boil and the devastation is wrought loudly on the screen, it is quite terrifying to see violent energy, human instinct, and Big Oil greed collide.

Berg, with sensitivity to the real lives lost, plays it cool up to that point, like Paul Greengrass without the shakes. None of the cast puts a foot wrong either side of the central pyrotechnics.