Peter Berg’s “Deepwater Horizon” is this year’s ultimate guilty pleasure at the movies.
This $156 million action film about a real-life 2010 blowout on an oil rig that killed 11 people and unleashed what many have called the biggest ecological disaster in US history is, frankly, vastly more fun than it has any right to be.
The writer-director of “Friday Night Lights” and “Lone Survivor” does a minimum of finger-pointing at the corporate greed of British Petroleum.
BP leased the rig and spent at least $43 billion after pleading guilty to manslaughter and accepting primary responsibility for the release of more than 3 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over the 87 days it took to cap a leaking well under the platform.
Instead, what we’ve got is a highly entertaining nautical version of “The Towering Inferno’’ (still my favorite guilty pleasure of all time) with Kurt Russell as the Deepwater Horizon’s crew chief Jimmy Harrell warning BP supervisor Donald Vidrine (John Malkovich) that risky shortcuts are being taken even as a BP colleague presents the crew with a safety award.
Vidrine (who was later sentenced to 10 months’ probation) waves off the warning — his only concern is that they’re 43 days behind schedule in pumping oil from their newest undersea well.
Sure enough, all hell breaks loose when mud, oil and explosive natural gas starts shooting up through the Deepwater Horizon, and safety systems fail to contain the disaster.
While Russell gets to do some impressive stunts, the main hero here is Mark Wahlberg as the chief electronics technician, Mike Williams, who executes some hair-raising rescues on board the burning platform before a very scary high-altitude jump off the rig into the Gulf with young colleague Andrea Fleytas (Gina Rodriguez).
The only other female in the cast is the dreadful Kate Hudson, who thankfully has minimal footage as Williams’ concerned wife. She spends most of her scenes (none with her real-life stepfather Russell) on the phone or Skype.
There’s not much in the way of characterizations or coherent explanations (if you want that, read the New York Times piece on which the film is loosely based) before things start blowing up.
After that, much of the dialogue is inaudible over the noise. Trust me, it really doesn’t matter.
Parts of the actual rig were recreated for “Deepwater Horizon.’’ Combined with some of the most convincing CGI I’ve seen in a recent movie, this is a truly harrowing experience — and I mean that in a good way.