Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang
Actor-turned-filmmaker Peter Berg
has run hot and cold during his directing career, from well-received
inspirational drama (2004’s Friday Night
Lights) to laughable popcorn dreck (2012’s Battleship).
He also has a fondness for
wartime drama, although his gung-ho, America-first sensibilities sometimes
slide into uncomfortable xenophobia, as with 2007’s deplorable The Kingdom.
But Berg’s skill as an old-school
action director cannot be denied; even when the story leaves something to be
desired, he exhibits a muscular filmmaking style that evokes the likes of John
Sturges, Robert Aldrich and even John Ford. Berg simply needs to choose his
projects more carefully, and resist the temptation to shove his politics down our
throats.
Under optimal circumstances, the
results can be both exciting and deeply moving, and that’s definitely the case
with Deepwater Horizon: without
question, Berg’s best film since Friday
Night Lights.
This calamitous real-world event
remains recent enough to resonate uncomfortably with viewers, who may recoil
from being reminded that just shy of a dozen men died on April 20, 2010, under
circumstances that absolutely were preventable. And, yes, at times Berg’s persuasive
reconstruction of these events is grimly realistic and very, very hard to watch.
But the tone is never
exploitative; indeed, scripters Matthew Michael Carnahan and Matthew Sand —
drawing their material from a New York Times article by David Barstow, David Rohde and Stephanie Saul — take an
honorable and even heroic approach. Berg’s film celebrates bravery and courage,
and serves as a deeply moving memorial to the 11 men who lost their lives, each
of whom is cited by name and photo, just prior to the end credits.
Try not to choke up during that montage.
On top of which, as a meticulous
account of recent history — allowing for some climactic exaggeration, for
dramatic impact — this film stands quite nobly as a lingering indictment of the
corporate bastards at British Petroleum (BP), who placed penny-pinching
shortcuts ahead of human lives. In that respect, Berg has done us an
incalculable public service.
It’s an old and sadly familiar
story, brought to the big screen in numerous variations: mine workers exploited
by callous supervisors; shop workers harassed by cruel owners; field laborers
all but imprisoned on company farms. Hard-working “little people” at the mercy
of smiling, condescending, immaculately dressed — and often indifferently
ignorant — administrators.
Carnahan and Sand set up that
dynamic from the start, allowing us to spend time with several key individuals
among the 126 crew members working this ultra deep-water drilling rig off the
Louisiana coast.
Mark Wahlberg is well cast as
Mike Williams, the savvy chief electronics technician for Transocean, the Swiss
company that owns Deepwater Horizon, which in turn is leased by BP. We meet him
just prior to his next 21-day shift, as he reluctantly leaves wife Felicia
(Kate Hudson) and their precocious young daughter, Sydney (Stella Allen). It’s
a sweet family tableau, well sketched by all three actors.
Their breakfast scene also allows
for a clever primer on how Deepwater Horizon operates, in the form of Sydney’s
school science project: an ingenious little model involving a shaken can of
soda, a metal tube and a dollop of honey. It’s a classic case of bringing us
viewers up to speed, and I’ve rarely seen it done so ingeniously (and
painlessly).
Once en route to the enormous
floating drilling rig, Mike shares his helicopter “taxi” with Deepwater
Horizon’s offshore installation manager, “Mr. Jimmy” Harrell (Kurt Russell),
and Deputy Dynamic Positioning Officer Andrea Fleytas (Gina Rodriguez). Mr.
Jimmy is charged with both the rig’s integrity and the entire crew’s safety; Andrea
is responsible for maintaining the floating rig’s position directly over the
well, by carefully controlling propellers and thrusters.
Like Wahlberg, Russell has an
inherent regular-guy vibe that makes Mr. Jimmy one with his crewmates; they
like and respect him. Russell also breezily displays the raised-eyebrow, don’t-mess-with-me authority that frequently
finds him butting heads with impatient BP reps.
Rodriguez, in turn, makes Andrea
capable, intelligent and equally personable: comfortably secure as “one of the
boys” in a primarily male and testosterone-fueled environment, and well able to
hold her own. Andrea and Mike have a droll running dialog regarding the likely
problems with her classic car, which refuses to run properly.
Ethan Suplee earns our respect as
Jason Anderson, the cautious senior toolpusher in charge of the drilling floor
crew. Dylan O’Brien is appropriately down and dirty as drilling crew floorhand
Caleb Holloway, who — despite his youth — already has spent three years on
Deepwater Horizon.
As luck (or scripting
convenience) would have it, on this particularly day Deepwater Horizon is
graced with the presence of BP execs O’Bryan and Sims, both played with
perfectly calibrated fatuous arrogance by, respectively, James DuMont and Joe
Chrest. Although irritating, they’re a harmless and easily ignored distraction,
as far as Mr. Jimmy, Mike and the others are concerned.
The actual villain of the piece
is BP’s on-site “company man,” Donald Vidrine, played to overstated excess by
John Malkovich. This character — an actual real-world BP supervisor — is the
film’s sole misstep. Between Vidrine’s blatantly dismissive arrogance and
Malkovich’s affected Cajun patois, he’s only a Snidely Whiplash mustache shy of
being a farcical bad guy right out of a stage “mellerdrama.”
Which is to say, Vidrine is badly
overplayed; Malkovich’s excess stands out like a sore thumb, amid all the other
naturalistic performances. Berg’s film didn’t need this sort of cartoon scoundrel.
Given the technical details
involved, Carnahan and Sand do an impressive job of bringing us up to speed
about the massive rig, the pipeline extending to the ocean floor, the physics
and hydraulics involved, and the constant danger to those who work in close proximity
to a mechanism operating under such extreme pressure. Berg takes his time,
keeping us engaged with the various character dynamics, until — when things
start to go wrong — we’re able to understand precisely why.
We already have a pretty good
idea of what’s coming, of course; the sickening post-mortem occupied newscasts
and front page headlines for months. It all came down to corners cut, over
issues argued here between Mr. Jimmy and Vidrine. We wince, irrationally hoping
that this might be some parallel universe version of events, with a different
outcome. But no.
When everything goes to hell —
literally — the re-created blowout is a masterpiece of choreographed mayhem by
special effects supervisor Burt Dalton. The carnage is horrific and persuasive,
with men flung like rag dolls amid seawater, driller’s mud, fire and the
despondent roar of Deepwater Horizon itself, as the giant rig’s skeletal
structure collapses and implodes in large and small chunks of destructive
debris.
And this is (merely) the third-act
climax. Equally impressive is the “quieter” time we’ve already spent on this massive
beast: a jaw-dropping display of filmmaking magic by production designer Chris
Seagers, who with a massive crew — including 85 welders — spent eight months
building separate elements of an 85-percent scale model of the actual rig. The
degree to which physical reality then merges with moviemaking artifice — with
an equally impressive assist from cinematographer Enrique Chediak — is
astonishing.
Once into the hell-for-leather
conclusion, Berg and editors Gabriel Fleming and Colby Parker Jr. choreograph
the action with ferocity, cutting back and forth between half a dozen sets of
characters and crises. The result is exciting, suspenseful and heart-stopping,
for the obvious reason: Even viewers who know that 11 men died, likely don’t
know which 11 men.
On a minor note, Berg doesn’t do
himself any favors, by opening with brief, off-camera snatches of testimony
during the subsequent Deepwater Horizon Incident Joint Investigation; it’s a
clumsy entry to this narrative, particularly since we never get closure via ongoing
witness statements, after the third act concludes. Instead, text blocks supply just
a few details, most notably the fact that federal prosecutors eventually
dropped manslaughter charges against BP supervisors Vidrine and Robert Kaluza
... which is as infuriating today, as it was when announced in late 2015.
But that’s small stuff. In sum,
Berg’s film is compelling, well constructed and deeply heartbreaking; we also
get the vicarious thrill of several Kurt Russell drop-dead stares tossed in
Malcovich’s direction, along with a great one-liner that Wahlberg’s Mike
delivers to Vidrine, in response to the latter’s wishful thinking, as a
justification for absurd fiscal frugality: “Hope is not a tactic.”
No kidding.
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