Deepwater Horizon
starring Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, John Malkovich, Gina Rodriguez, Dylan O’Brien and Kate Hudson
screenplay by Mathew Michael Carnahan
directed by Peter Berg
Rating: ♦♦♦♦♦
Called “Burning Ocean” in Japan - a good title - Deepwater Horizon is about the disaster that overtook the British Petroleum drilling ship Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. It is based on the book Deepwater Horizon’s Final Hours by David Barstow and David Rohde. I remember when it was in the news, during Barack Obama’s presidency. The exposed wellhead leaked over 200 million barrels of raw petroleum into the Gulf of Mexico over a three-month period. The rig was not owned, but leased by BP to drill a hole. The petty, greedy pursuit of money by a major multi-national company in a project that was almost 50-days behind schedule led to a long list of operational violations that ought to have stopped the operation.
I liked Deepwater Horizon for the same reason that I liked Unstoppable (2010, starring Chris Pine and Denzel Washington, directed by Tony Scott). It was the machinery and the performance of men operating the machinery. Cool. In Unstoppable it was the interior of a diesel locomotive. In Deepwater Horizon it was all the machinery of an oil drilling rig at sea.
Interestingly, Kurt Russell is the life partner of Goldie Hawn who is the mother of Kate Hudson (although he is not her biological father).