[yasr_overall_rating]
A story set on the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, which exploded during April 2010 and created the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
When watching a movie based on real life events, such as “Deepwater Horizon,” it’s not always easy to know if what you’re witnessing actually occurred, or whether it is part of the Hollywood machine that likes to exaggerate pretty much anything that flashes by at 24 frames per second. Peter Berg directed Mark Wahlberg in another film that was “based on a true story” which was released back in 2013, “Lone Survivor,” a movie I thoroughly enjoyed and with “Deepwater Horizon,” Berg delivers again, administering unyielding tension and an involving sense of chaos. The difference between “Lone Survivor” and “Deepwater Horizon,” is that the majority of people seeing this film, will be better acquainted with the story than that of “Lone Survivor.”
The movie is based on the real life events that lead up to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, an ultra-deepwater, semi-submersible offshore drilling rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in April of 2010 from an uncontrollable blowout. As a result, 11 crewmen lost their lives and two days later, the rig sank underwater, leaving the well open, allowing oil to pour into the ocean, causing the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
The movie takes place within a 24 hour time frame and focuses mainly on Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg), the rig’s chief electronics technician and a few of his co-workers, Andrea Fleytas (Gina Rodriguez), a safety systems engineer, Caleb Holloway (Dylan O’Brien), one of the rig’s youngest drilling crew members, and their boss Jimmy Harrell (Kurt Russell), the rig’s manager. Gearing up for their next three-week hitch on the Deepwater Horizon, they land on the rig and assume their positions but shortly after, during the final phase of a series of drilling tests, they encounter an insuppressible eruption which consumes the rig and ignites an inextinguishable fireball. With the rig rapidly being devoured by the scorching flames, Mike rescues Jimmy from his living quarters but before evacuating, he informs Mike that he must operate the blind shear ram, a closing element fitted with steel blades designed to cut the drillpipe, in order to prevent an oil spill, but when that fails, evacuating the rig is their only hope of survival.
The tension is relentless in its propulsion and while we believe and hope that the central characters will not die, we literally find ourselves questioning that very belief, realizing that we actually don’t know if they will or not, and this adds to the already escalating suspense. Once the action starts, it never lets up and unlike most other conventional disaster flicks, we never once stop to take a breather and listen to characters wax poetically about life before the catastrophe, and what their future plans encompass once it’s all over. Mark Wahlberg delivers another impressive performance as does the entire cast while director Berg proves that he is more than capable of delivering the goods on a large-scale spectacle.
While the oil spill continued to make headline news in the subsequent months after the explosion, “Deepwater Horizon” focuses instead on the men and women who lived, worked and for some, died on the rig. The movie is based on interviews with 21 Horizon crew members and on sworn testimony and written statements from nearly all of the other 94 people who escaped the rig. It is a fast-paced, unstoppable adrenaline rush with a top-notch cast and skilled direction.
In theaters Friday, September 30th
