★ ★ ★ ½ ☆
On April 20, 2010, an oil rig exploded in the Gulf of
Mexico. By the time the fires had been put out and the spillage had been capped
87 days later, it had been named the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history.
Being a 14 year-old at the time, with the minimal interest in current affairs
that comes with adolescence, my knowledge of the incident prior to this cinematic
retelling was limited to the ecological fallout. Not only had I never heard of
the Deepwater Horizon itself, it
never occurred to me that its destruction even carried an immediate human cost.
The great success of the film is that the loss of those eleven men is keenly
felt, even if their characterization is slim to non-existent.
Returning from 2013’s rather excellent Lone Survivor is the triple threat of director Peter Berg, leading
man Mark Wahlberg, and composer Steve Jablonsky. They take on the day of
disaster from ground zero, following rig worker Mike Williams (Wahlberg) as he leaves
his wife (a seriously under-utilised Kate Hudson) and daughter to supervise
blowout prevention on the Horizon. Upon
arrival, Williams mingles with fellow crew members, suffers through uncomfortable
encounters with BP moneyman Donald Vidrine (John Malkovich) and is suddenly
thrust into the inferno when a pressure accumulation beneath the rig triggers a
total meltdown.
I’ve probably said this before, but I’ll happily watch Mark
Wahlberg in anything, from his deer-in-headlights performance in The Happening to his comparatively
subtle but scorching role in The
Departed. Here, we find him somewhere in the middle. He gets a lot of
running about to do and dodges a lot of blistering debris, but the strength of his
performance is that he sells the good-natured, slightly unkempt labourer in the
build-up, so his later good deeds feel completely characteristic (though the
film makes the error of playing us a recording of the real Williams before we
even get a glimpse of the actor; always something to avoid in biopics).
He shares the screen with a finely-moustachioed Kurt Russel
as Jimmy Harrell, the rig’s manager. His main job is to glower at Malkovich a
lot, which he accomplishes with aplomb. Dylan O’Brien is also pretty effective in
sporadic appearances but is barely noticeable through the layers of mud (and
until the credits rolled I was thoroughly convinced it was Evan Peters playing
the role).
With the focus initially planted on the humdrum working day
of the rig, there’s little need for digital gloss, but when the rig bursts into
flame in a series of seat-shaking explosions, the blaze (when seen on a
significantly big screen) is enough to burn out the retinas. The physical blood,
sweat and tears are also appropriately visceral, and though any gore is toned down
in comparison to Berg’s previous picture, the fate that befalls Russell’s
character when things go south is sure to induce a good half-hour of sharp
winces. Refreshingly, there’s no slow-motion, piano-tinkled attempts to exploit
any deaths for entertainment, either, merely a final roll call that says more
with just eleven names than any heartstring-tugging music could accomplish.
That said, the score is peak Jablonsky; a collection of
sweeping, spinning stringscapes dashed with incidental thrums that speak to an unmistakable
milieu of Americana, in which the film is steeped. Sure enough, as Williams
turns back from loading life rafts to gape at the pandemonium, the stars & stripes
hang intact.
The sight and sound is all very evocative, but a screenplay penned
by Matthew Michael Carnahan leaves something to be desired, Carnahan having
taken over from previous writer/director J.C. Chandor, who left the project due
to creative differences. Chandor made the unintelligible unmissable in Margin Call, and I feel his hand may
have prevented the screenplay’s rank and file versus suit-and-tie metanarrative
from coming across so blindingly obvious. The labourers are fast-talking,
techno-babbling everymen, while the BP reps are smirking, beady-eyed taskmasters
with their shirts tucked in so tightly they may as well be robots. Malkovich’s
painfully enunciated accent does little to stave off this comparison.
Demonstrably, it was the oversight of those representatives
that enabled the catastrophe to take place, but there’s no nuance to the divide
at all. Lone Survivor managed to
reproduce a harrowing event with minimal flag-waving, but Deepwater Horizon is constantly out to place the blame. Berg effectively
combines the dangerous allure of Irwin Allen movies with the real-world
gravitas displayed by Paul Greengrass’ United
93 (still the high watermark for the post 9/11 disaster subgenre), but the
latter element is somewhat lacking. As he now takes on the Boston Marathon bombings
in next year’s Patriots Day, it seems
his and Wahlberg’s template for true story dramas is paying off dividends, but
one wonders how much longer the formula will last.
