"This here's the well from hell, girl!"

Rating: 10/10 (2 October 2017)

I didn't expect the film to be that much of an action movie, even though the Deepwater Horizon incident remained at the national forefront for over three months. After the characters are established and the premise of the story is set, the semi-submersible offshore oil drilling rig known as Deepwater Horizon turns into a veritable fireball with employees scrambling for their lives, or in the case of the eleven who didn't make it, a final, forbidding resting place. There's just enough well drilling science interspersed throughout the story to guide the uninitiated about what happened, with a thorough indictment made against the cost cutting maneuvers of the British Petroleum honchos calling the shots. Besides what we see here, I was also expecting in some way the eventual successful effort that shut the oil spill down, but the picture really only followed the tragedy through the first few days until the surviving crew members were all rescued. One's visceral response to the blazing inferno that consumed the oil rig is tempered by the fact that this was a real event that claimed eleven lives. What's impressive is the mammoth undertaking director Peter Berg accepted when offered the challenge to make the film. Extra features on the DVD describe the formidable task, putting you right in the middle of the disaster.