This movie was released soon after my father had passed away in a similar situation, but in an FPSO ship, and for that reason, it took me so long to be able to watch it and I still don't want my mother to do so.
My father died saving his crew and I can tell you from experience that there's no justice in this world, nor even for big things like this.
I can only feel empathy for the families of those who died in the Deepwater Horizon, the deep damage the incident caused to them... it's sad to think they probably didn't get any real support from those companies afterward, just like we didn't get any as well from the big Norwegian company my father worked to.
In the end, you can read all the accident reports you can find, with their "consequences" for the accidents sites, but you won't find one that includes the consequences for the families of the deceased ones and the trauma of the survivors.
There should be so much more movies about these "accidents"... maybe it'd raise awareness of how dangerous and risky this work is and why it should be better and heavily regulated and supervised - but not by the companies operating them, but by neutrals affiliated to the Navy, who won't cover up the wrong things in the name of profit. If there was more serious supervision, many of these accidents could be avoided, for the good of the sailors, crew and the sea.
As expected this is a bit of a propaganda movie against BP but that was of course rather expected. It is still watchable. The dramatization is fairly well done and the effects are believable as well as enjoyable. If you watch it as a disaster drama and special effects movie it is definitely okay.
As a documentary, well I would say that it falls short. The movie only covers the initial explosion. Once the platform is evacuated the movie stops. I am somewhat disappointed at that. I would at least have liked to see the attempts to put out the fire. Where are the scenes with the boats trying to douse the rig with water for instance?
I would also have liked the film to cover the attempts to close the well, the technical challenges involved and the fight against the oil spill. This is not at all covered.
I feel that the film attempts to ride on public opinion, pretend to be a action/disaster movie as well as a fact telling one and cash in on the accident. The action/disaster parts were well done but the movie left out a lot of the, perhaps less spectacular, drama around the accident. It is a shame because now it became a rather ordinary movie as well as giving a distasteful feeling they were just trying to make some quick bucks on the disaster.
That also made the factual parts somewhat in doubt. I feel the movie is making a strong effort to portray BP as willful criminals. I am sure there is plenty of blame that should fly BP’s way but at the same time one can read that “On November 8, 2010, the inquiry by the Oil Spill Commission revealed its findings that BP had not sacrificed safety in attempts to make money, but that some decisions had increased risks on the rig.”. As always, things are not black and white and oil drilling is risky business after all.
Anyway, enough ramblings, I found the movie okay, nothing more and nothing less.
Asked for an action movie, got so much more!
Went into this movie expecting some good acting and nothing more, but after already fifteen minutes I knew there was so much more to this movie than Mark Wahlberg and Kurt Russell crawling trough some flames.
The conversation at the beginning between Mike Williams, played by Mark Wahlberg, his wife and his daughter really shows what you can expect during the first hour of the movie: good characters with really good conversations. It just feels real when Mike enters the Deepwater Horizon-platform and does a little talk with everyone he encounters. It really gets you invested in the story before everything, literally, blows up.
Eventually you are on the edge of your seat when everything goes down. Great explosions, good shots and ok sounds at this point were enough for me to keep interested until the very last second.
A couple of minor nitpicks are the scenes created in the pump line, they really didn't need those scenes to raise the tension, and the fact that there was the "America!-scene". Why was it there? To show how good America is? Really didn't need to be there.
Overal great movie that absolutely has a place in my top-10 of 2016.
Review by whitsbrainVIP 6BlockedParent2022-01-15T17:28:18Z
Anything with Kurt Russell in it is has a head start as far as I'm concerned. He's fantastic in this. Smart as a whip and tough as nails. Just what I'd expect. I'm also turning into a Mark Wahlberg fan. He's the headliner here. He's really likable and plays a character that is perfect, I guess. Well, this movie is based on a true story so I'm not sure if the person he is portraying is flawless, but then, there's no time to explore that anyway. Nice work, Wahlberg.
I didn't realize until the movie ended that it was directed by Peter Berg. No doubt he learned some disaster on the water lessons from directing "Battleship" (I'm only sort of kidding). "Deepwater Horizon" not surprisingly paints the company BP as greedy, careless, assholes. Still, the focus is on the survival of the main characters so sanctimonious soap-boxing, moralizing or preaching is minimal. It's kind of refreshing. Oh, there's plenty of glares and stares passed between the BP corporate types and the bust-their-nuts Deepwater crew. But ultimately mistakes get made, whether caused by greed or stupidity, and everyone is forced to react to the Hell exploding around them.
And speaking of explosions, Berg levels the rig with mud, oil and fire. I don't know if he embellishes to extremes or not, but the chaos he creates on-screen is impressive.
"Deepwater Horizon" is a satisfying movie. The fact that it's based on a true story adds to its effectiveness, but it would be good even if it were total fiction.