The Blowout In The Gulf

Rating: 9/10 (4 October 2016)

With the emphasis on producing alternative forms of energy in the 21st century to avert the consequences of climate change and global warming, the drilling for oil and natural gas nevertheless continues to be a real thing—and, inevitably, a real problem, in terms of oil spills. The massive 1989 Exxon Valdez catastrophe off of Alaska, and the blowout of an oil rig off of Santa Barbara, California in February 1969 all demonstrated how catastrophic the consequences of oil drilling can be, not only to the people who work in such a profession, but also (and much more importantly) to the animal life that is destroyed. But the most catastrophic example in this arena occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, fifty miles off of the Louisiana coastline, when the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig suffered a massive blowout on the evening of April 21, 2010. The blowout, which basically destroyed the rig, lasted eighty-seven days before it was fully contained; and in that time, eleven workers on that rig died, and some 210 million gallons of oil gushed into the Gulf, and eventually onto the Gulf Coast itself, destroying tons of marine and other forms of animal life, and severely crippling the region's economic livelihood for years to come. That story is the basis of DEEPWATER HORIZON.
Mark Wahlberg and Kurt Russell portray, respectively, Mike Williams and Jimmy Harrell, two of the most important workers on the Deepwater Horizon, who are mightily and rightly concerned about the safety corners that have been severely curtailed by the cost-cutting measures of the rig's owner, British Petroleum, whose American representative (John Malkovich) agrees with the orders coming from the company's main headquarters in London. Despite being a $186 billion company, British Petroleum, or BP, apparently either can't afford to, or finds it totally unnecessary to, run the necessary safety tests in order to ensure that something catastrophic doesn't occur. And then on that fateful night, during a pressure test, mud and a little bit of crude oil start gushing onto the top part of the rig, whose pipes extend some five thousand feet into the depths of the sea. Then a monstrous blowout occurs, and the entire rig becomes a flaming pyre on the surface of the Gulf. Both Wahlberg and Russell are badly injured in the blast, but Wahlberg does manage to rescue the systems captain Andrea Fleytas (portrayed by Gina Rodriguez, the star of the TV sitcom "Jane The Virgin") in time. Though most of the workers do get off the rig before the worst occurs (albeit barely), eleven of their colleagues are left to perish.
In its depiction of this environmental horror story, DEEPWATER HORIZON does a fairly good job of showing how a typical crew of oil rig workers operates fairly far away from the shoreline; but it also points out how corporate greed can also trump safety and why, even though it is the right of the workers to speak up about safety without fear of losing their jobs and their livelihood, it can sometimes be just a little too easy to look the other way. Wahlberg, Russell, and Rodriguez, along with the colleagues they are responsible for, have a huge amount of qualms about the integrity of the cement casing of the pipes that is supposed to protect the right, along with the electronic and mechanical safety procedures; but their concerns are ignored by Malkovich until it is basically too late to stop an environmental and human catastrophe of staggering proportions. The screenplay by Matthew Michael Carnahan (who did the script for Robert Redford's 2007 film LIONS FOR LAMBS) and Matthew Sand doesn't exactly paint the workers as being without fault, and Peter Berg's direction almost seems to say as much,. Despite that flaw, the horrific disaster itself is well staged, and the video clips of the real-life incident well integrated into the editing.
Both Wahlberg and Russell, not surprisingly, are quite good, as is Malkovich in what could be called the "heavy" role; but it is Rodriguez, normally thought of as a comedic actress, who really seems to stand out among all the machismo, providing a more human (as well as feminine) face amongst the testosterone. Even more, DEEPWATER HORIZON, besides being an (albeit mild) indictment of corporate malfeasance, is also very much an indictment of the dismissive attitudes of the oil/gas industry towards the harm their activities do to other peoples and businesses, and why such an industry perhaps needs to be shut down forever.