As a filmmaker, Peter Berg is in love with the process of
things. He fills his films, even Battleship, with
meticulous, methodical sequences, like a helicopter refueling early on in his
latest tale of real-life disaster and heroism, Deepwater
Horizon. An affection and even tenderness washes over what amounts to
little more than a mechanical interaction between man and machine.
Similarly, Berg is in love with dismantling things,
specifically the male body. He puts the same near-loving,
borderline-fetishistic care into absolutely pulverizing the Navy SEALs in
Lone Survivor, breaking them apart piece by piece. And Deepwater
Horizon features the same care and carnage. He also adores just
beating the shit out of frequent collaborator Mark Wahlberg. Good god, that man
goes through hell in Peter Berg movies—what do they have lined up for
Patriot’s Day?
Deepwater Horizon tells the story of the
2010 BP oil spill that dumped 49 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico
over the course of 87 days. More than the disaster, the film focuses on the men
and the (at least according to the movie) lone woman on board the titular
floating drilling platform, the sequence of events leading up to the initial explosion,
and the crew’s struggle to escape.
Mark Wahlberg plays to his strengths as Mike Williams, a
good husband, father, and all around family man just trying to make a living.
Kurt Russell turns in a fantastic grizzled, handle bar mustachioed turn as Mr.
Jimmy, the big boss on the rig—he may be tough, but his guys would all crawl
through hell for him. Gina Rodriguez’s Andrea Fleytas essentially drives the
rig, Dylan O’Brien plays a new guy, Ethan Suplee shows up as another crew
member, and there are a bunch of bit players who only have names because there
are real-world counterparts.
Though there’s nothing much too these characters—we only see
Mike and Andrea, briefly, beyond the confines of work—they have a nice banter
and solid chemistry. The screenplay from Matthew Michael Carnahan and Matthew
Sand gives the dialogue an authentic lived-in feel, and we know enough about
the characters from their interactions that we don’t need pages of backstory.
After all, nuanced individuals are not this movie’s main concern, explosions,
mayhem, and gut-wrenching physical injury are the order of the day.
Class conflict burbles under the surface, eventually boiling
over. Berg, as he often does, paints the blue collar working man as good and
noble, knowledgeable and capable—they’re practically flawless. On the other hand,
he casts the BP officials as clueless bureaucrats at best—like two
middle-management suck-ups on board for a photo op—and maniacal villains with a
willful, deliberate disregard for the consequences of their actions at worst.
Seriously, every moment John Malkovich’s Donald Vidrine appears on screen,
channeling his inner Wicked Witch of the Bayou, he’s half a second away from
cackling and tenting his fingers. The capitalists-versus-laborers conflict is
simple, but, like the characters, gets the job done well enough.
Deepwater Horizon truly shines when it
gives up trying to be something bigger, something lofty and idealistic, and
settles into its role as a throwback disaster flick. It’s here that Peter Berg hits
his stride, crafting tense, raw action scenes as the crew attempts to stop the
bleeding as it were and fight their way to survival. Like a less frantic, more
coherent Michael Bay, Berg makes the audience feel the impressive fiery force
of nature. And when it crests, Deepwater Horizon thrills
with visceral panic and chaos, and hellish apocalyptic imagery.
Anything outside of the scenes on the oil rig, however,
remains superfluous and distracting. Deepwater Horizon sets
Mike up with an idyllic wife (Kate Hudson) and daughter—just enough to give him
something concrete to live for. Fine as bookends, the script tries to sew this
threat into the larger fabric of the story, despite the fact Hudson has nothing
to do but generic cut-scene handwringing. Cloying and tedious, these moments
pull the viewer away from the main thrust of the narrative. We already know the
specifics of Mike’s struggle for survival, and watching his bland, boring wife worry
adds nothing and lessens the fraught tension of the nightmarish inferno.
Berg wants to celebrate the heroism of these men and make a grander
point about the perils of the profit-over-consequences corporate mentality, an
endeavor that meets with moderate success. The true cost of greed takes center
stage—in both human life and unprecedented environmental destruction—and Deepwater
Horizon is sure to piss people off anew as it puts a personal face on
this unprecedented catastrophe and rams home that the people responsible faced
shockingly little blowback.
The use of archival footage and photos at the end—similar to
Lone Survivor—feels overly blunt and unnecessary. We witness
the resilience and survival against incredible odds, and the film is largely
respectful to the eleven crewmembers who lost their lives. This add-on just
feels like being told again what we’ve already been shown—Deepwater
Horizon does a good enough job of that on its own without needing to
resort to cheap tricks and sentimentality, however innocuous.
Though this one element feels like forced rah-rah enthusiasm
(it’s almost like the film says, “Look at these faces, these are real people,
if you don’t like this movie, you’re an asshole”) and the overall package is
uneven, Deepwater Horizon toes a fine line between honoring
a real-life tragedy and being one of the most exhilarating Hollywood disaster
movies in recent memory. [Grade:
B]
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