Deepwater Horizon: Movie Review

"Deepwater Horizon" had its moments. There's no doubt that the film had some serious emotional punch at its core. At its best, the film will play and tug with your emotions making sure that every moment is full of tension not unlike how high the "pressure" goes portrayed in the movie. Unfortunately, the whole experience is stymied by a very slow and very tedious first half that just simply failed to connect with us.

The Deepwater Horizon was an ultra-deep-water, advanced oil rig owned by the Swiss company Transocean and leased by British Petroleum (BP) that exploded on April 20, 2010. The rig riveted the world on that fateful day as it experienced a devastating blowout, fire and nearly unstoppable ocean floor oil leak. It would become the largest accidental ocean oil spill in human history. The film follows the story that many have not seen or heard: the vital question of why it happened and the story of the 126 crew members working aboard the Deepwater Horizon that day, caught in the most harrowing circumstances imaginable. In an instant, they were faced with their darkest hour, amidst an unstoppable inferno in the middle of the ocean and to save one another.

It's pretty obvious that "Deepwater Horizon" had a hard time pushing more out of its source material. That's probably why the first half of the film was such a drag because it was actually dragging itself intentionally. In connection with this, we noticed that the film was banking on the hidden side of its characters showing that members of the crew had a life outside the doomed rig. Yet, outside of the main character portrayed by Mark Wahlberg, no one else really got significant screen time to show any inkling of it. Finally, it also didn't help that before the explosion, the film had a tendency to lose us with huge vats of technical talk between characters that was an instant migraine to translate. But again, the film is a tale of two halves. Once things turn to shit, the film simply just got better and better by the minute. This is in no part to a talented cast that brought their A-game. But Peter Berg also knew how to play with tension turning a boring film into a riveting one in an instant. Can we say that the wait was worth it? Probably not.

Rating: 3 reels

Why you should watch it:
- great performances from the casy
- the second half was simply riveting and thrilling

Why you shouldn't watch it:
- the first half simply dragged the film down into the bottom of the abyss