A Good Depiction Of What Happened On The Rig

Rating: 8/10 (16 January 2017)

When we think of the Deepwater Horizon incident I suspect that most people tend to think of the massive leak, that leaked literally hundreds of millions of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico over a period of several weeks before the leak was sealed. It was one of the most massive environmental disasters in American history. What doesn't stand out in my memory, though, is what happened on the oil rig itself. This movie tries to fill in that gap, and does so admirably.
Much of it is told from the perspective of Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg), the chief electrician on the Deepwater Horizon. It opens by giving us a glimpse of his family life (enough to make this a very human and poignant story, but it's not overdone.) Once on the Horizon, we're introduced to various crew members, as well as a couple of executives from BP, who own the rig and the well. There's a lot of technical content, much of which went over my head, but I wonder if that might have been very deliberate. I may not have understood exactly what was happening, but I understood clearly enough that there was a problem building.
The early tension comes from conflict between the crew (especially "Mr. Jimmy" - the captain, played by Kurt Russell) who know something isn't right, and the BP execs (the most important played by John Malkovich) who push the crew to keep going because their primary concern is that the project is over budget and behind schedule. When money takes priority over safety the result usually won't be good. In this case it's not. The well explodes, the rig is caught up in a massive fire, and the crew is left in a desperate struggle to survive.
Everything is very well portrayed and the cast does a very good job of drawing the viewer into the story and making you care. I've never been on an oil rig, but the set seemed authentic and gave the viewer the sense of being there. The buildup of tension is well done and once disaster strikes this becomes fast-paced and exciting. Peter Berg did a good job directing. Well done all around.