Review of Deepwater Horizon (2016) by Dan K — 12 Mar 2017

I'm guessing that this movie doesn't feature highly on the favourites list of BP employees telling as it does the story of the events surrounding the explosion on the oil-rig Deepwater Horizon.

It paints a sorry picture of the the events leading up to that dreadful incident showing how corporate greed and irresponsibility overrode safety and established good practice in pursuit of economic gain.

For me, as a layperson, I had hoped that this movie would clarify some of reasons behind the terrible events of 2010 when the disaster occurred. However, I left feeling none the wiser, just knowing something really awful had happened.

The problem for me is there is just too much specialist technobabble about what I suppose should be the normal running of an oil rig, with too little explained. This movie may well be a factually accurate telling of what happened but I'm afraid I've no real way of knowing.

I feel like I should have had a crash course in oil exploration before seeing this film in order to understand what was going on as too many of the scenes just seemed confusing. All I know is that things got very tense between John Malkovic and Kurt Russell and Mark Wahlberg was caught up in it, trying to sort things out.

What we have is a disaster movie that I really wanted to understand but was frustrated that I couldn't and I actually feel this did something of a disservice to the people who were killed or injured as it didn't tell their story effectively.

Maybe it is just too soon after the event?