Review of Deepwater Horizon (2016) by Bruce R — 29 Jan 2017

Great graphics and action and visually a very appealing movie. However it doesn't really go beyond the explosion and I really wanted to see more. The first act spends a lot of time trying to setup the characters and I found a lot of dialogue not believable and contrived. Seems like a lot of movies these days tried to hard and you get all this fast talking, back and forth dialogue that just comes off feeling forced for the sake of trying to create the character rather than trusting the audience to form our own opinions of the character. Whenever you tell a true story there is always some dramatic license taken but in this movie it was overly obvious and they could've toned it down a bit.

Also for the love of God enough of the shaky camera documentary style of shooting. I cannot overemphasize how distracting it is to try to watch a dialogue and you constantly have the camera shaking back and forth. I don't get why they do that...ever since 'Traffic' directors want to get that feel and it is SOOOO distracting. When I am watching people in real life have a conversation, I am not shaking my head all over the place....so why do that with the camera? The visuals were spectacular and really tells the story and sense of foreboding early in the movie. But overall the movie was pretty linear. I actually dozed off at one point and had to rewind it. A good one time watch, but nothing really surprising and a pretty predictable movie....which it should be because we know what is going to happen. All the more reason to add more depth and try to make it not so linear. Kurt Russell was the best in the movie and really acted well. Malkovich's performance was 'ehh'. Kate Hudson, I didn't see the point in her role. I'm giving this a 3 out of 5 but only for the visuals.