Could have been better

Rating: 4/10 (8 March 2017)

This film is fairly close to as advertised. It deals with a real-life disaster, brings you close to the action, show the explosion with some special effects, keeps you in some suspense, and adds some "feel good" element that some people are "ok" at the end of it. It stars Mark Wahlberg, and this is right up his alley. However, the film seemed too long (it is not that long). The lead-up to the explosion was too slow and the technical jargon used during that section of the film did not help as I think it was lost on the audience in general. The draw of a real-disaster is understandable; however, this movie is nowhere near thought-provoking, political or anything like that. It does summarize some facts at the end, but those facts don't say much either. I do find it unfortunate that the movie was not made to be more thought provoking, but I understand that was not the focus of this movie. Unfortunately, by having such a superficial focus, the movie needed to be about a half hour shorter. The acting performances were fine, but nothing special.