Review of Deepwater Horizon (2016) by Stuart F — 15 Dec 2016

Deepwater Horizon review. America sure does love their based on true event hero stories. In some ways they could be considered the easiest movies to make. A film studio only bothers to make the movie if the story and characters are good enough, and then a lot of the concept just takes care of itself.

Just like with something like Titanic, you know what is going to happen by the end of Deepwater Horizon. So the tension doesn't come from the unknown, it comes from getting to know the characters (in this case real people) and hoping everything turns out well for them.

So this movie really needed to make us care about the people. Well task achieved. The scripting is fantastic (although some of the accents were a little difficult to decipher) and the interactions between the actors were wonderful.

This is a world of men on an oil rig who work and live together for weeks at a time. The banter and friendship is obvious. The last actor to be introduced in the film is the disaster itself. Wow! The final act in this film is breath taking.

You can feel the heat from the explosions and the life or death drama is incredibly real. I teared up in a few places because this is a real event where people lost their lives. Yes, spoiler. But hey, I remember this accident happening so not much of a spoiler.

Finally they pay homage to the actual people in the credits and I felt the movie experience was complete. These sort of movies aren't the best fun and they are not ones that you can't wait to watch again.

But sometimes it is good to watch a solid film that makes you feel something. Deepwater Horizon was very good.