Review of Deepwater Horizon (2016) by Grant S — 04 Jul 2017

In April 2010 the exploration oil rig Deepwater Horizon, stationed in the Gulf of Mexico, suffered a catastrophic disaster, exploding and being set on fire. This is the story of the lead-up to the disaster, the disaster itself and the individual actions involved, and the aftermath.

More filler than drama - essentially a 40-50 minute short docudrama turned into a 107 minute movie. The remainder is just padding. Yes, I know, the idea is to engage you, the audience, by getting you to know and like the characters and thus empathize with them when disaster strikes, but here it doesn't really work. The lead-up here is dull, and the attempts at engagement overdone and overt. It also doesn't help that, having introduced you to all these characters, other than the main ones it is difficult to tell who is who when the tragedy unfolds.

On that point, the action itself is difficult to follow. By trying to make things as realistic as possible, director Peter Berg also makes things more confusing, with dim/dark lighting and random, unexplained things happen. It becomes hard to tell which characters are involved or what the dangers are (other than the obvious ones, of course).

While a tragedy, there's not enough detail and drama involved to make a complete movie, but it got made anyway.