Simple but effective disaster movie

Rating: 10/10 (17 December 2016)

This is a good, if narratively very simple, disaster movie. All the usual story beats of a typical disaster movie are here: we're introduced to the characters, then we wait in suspense for the disaster to happen, and then it's all exhilarating explosions and peril and the struggle for escape and survival until the end. Simple but effective.
We can forgive them for keeping it simple though, because it's a true story, so there's only so much they can embellish. There's no room for a much more intricate plot than what we see here. Indeed, I'd say this movie is the most interesting if you have some personal interest in or memory of learning about the real story back when it happened. What makes this movie engaging is knowing that this story really happened and the characters in the movie are real people (who in reality look nowhere near as attractive as the actors chosen to play them, amusingly enough). Otherwise, it's just a well made, but fairly standard disaster movie.
Personal BP anecdote: I was a geology student when this story happened. In 2011, one year after the incident, I attended a presentation by BP representatives who came to my school to recruit geology students. They gave a presentation on 100 years of BP's company history, during which they gushed all about all of BP's accomplishments throughout the century. But conveniently for them, BP was founded in 1909, so the presentation ended at the year 2009. Not a single word was uttered on the disaster and oil spill. Anyway, I thought that was amusing.