Watch Out For That Traveling Crown Block!

Rating: 4/10 (25 May 2017)

I believe one of the producers was Mark Wahlberg, who also stars. Too bad. His writers and his own judgment failed him. When it comes to special visual effects it's possible to go too far -- and they have gone it.
The first twenty minutes are kind of interesting. We get to know the characters, like a grizzled Kurt Russel who manages the rig, Wahlberg who is the chief electronic technician, and John Malkovitch, who is not one of the worker ants but rather seems to represent the suits who own the rig, Burns Phillips. It's a little hard to tell. It's a little hard to tell anything about the people or the operations or the rig itself. You see, I am only five years old and I need the pace of the exposition to be slowed down so I can understand the meaning of terms like crack block, feeder pump, boom, operative covering, and cement block. I'm smart, so I figured out p.s.i. all by myself. I never did figure out why some of the jiggling needles on the gauges caused concern while others didn't. Malkovitch is treated as the villain of the piece but I don't know why, since his suggestions sounded sensible enough to me. But then, though I'm smart, my intuitive faculty is impaired.
There's a lot of bonhommie aboard the Deepwater Horizon, which floats and isn't set on piles, and which has a bridge from which the screws are operated and all that. It's really a big flat boat. There's even an attractive young lady who works on the bridge. Everybody knows everybody else and there are running gags expressing the extent of Gemeinchaft. It all reminded me of the opening scenes of "The Perfect Storm" except these blue-collar types are pretty well set. Life aboard one of these rigs is deliberately made pleasant for the crew, otherwise why would they work on them? The cuisine is described in other sources as four star. There's booze available too. Everything is as comfortable as practicable only no smoking.
That's the first twenty minutes. The rest is a breathless explosion of CGIs and special visual effects. The wretched drill blows out and we see a gusher of mud and/or oil, which then is ignited and burns eleven men to a crisp, while wounding most of the others. There is no pause. The structure blows up piece by piece with no explanation of what the hell is going on. An hour of solid flame, terror, flying debris, and blood. As a five year old, I loved it. It's hard to imagine what other audience it's aimed at. It's just that even at my tender age it's possible to reach a point of genuine satiation. Of the performances, only one stands out. The bewhiskered Malkovitch is a magnetic Cajun speaking in a memorable dialect.