‘Deepwater’ captures real-life disaster
With a scant introduction, director Peter Berg airlifts the audience into the chaotic micro-culture of offshore oil drilling in “Deepwater Horizon.” Our hero, Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg), barely has time to kiss his wife (Kate Hudson) and kid (Stella Allen) before we’re awash in the jargon and joshing of roughnecks, engineers and BP company men jostling for the bottom line.
Berg’s camera jogs behind the Horizon crew on the job: Mike, the electronics technician, rig boss Mr. Jimmy (Kurt Russell) and bridge officer Andrea Fleytas (Gina Rodriguez). Among the verbal melee one phrase is initially repeated over and over until it rises out of the ambient chatter and we realize just how important it is: “cement test,” or the lack there of. The cement is what protects the oil rig from the pressure of the oil and gas drilled out of the well below it, and overbudget and over-schedule, the higher ups decided to take their chances with the cement and save a few couple hundred thousand.
T h e r e ’ s a n o t h e r p h r a s e , repeated by Mike: “Hope ain’t a tactic.” In fact, hope fails the crew at every turn. Hope fails after an inconclusive negative pressure test on the drill line; hope fails when mud starts flowing up out of the well; and hope is blown to smithereens when every safety protocol and backup system fails due to human or mechanical error and the Deepwater Horizon explodes into a seaborne
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