Deepwater Horizon

Deepwater Horizon is directed by Peter Berg and stars Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, John Malkovich and Kate Hudson. It tells the story of Deepwater Horizon, one of the worst oil rig disasters in U.S history, which shook the world on the night of April 20th 2010.

Deepwater Horizon is quite possibly the best real life disaster ever brought to screen. The film starts with the main protagonist's daughter practising her school presentation on her father's job. Straight away we are fed key facts as to how oil rig drilling works. Instead of being treated like an audience; the whole way through the film, characters told each other key points about the rig that told us all we needed to know. This was some very good story telling as we weren't directly told the information but it was given to us through carefully crafted dialogue.

The characters are very likeable which gets us to care about them even more when bad stuff starts to happen. The film contained almost oscar worthy performances, Wahlberg was stoic and very level headed, Russell was world weary with a strong sense of duty no matter how hard the going got,  and Malkovich was the reckless company executive - pushing limits further and further all out of greed. The acting in this film was nothing short of amazing. Whilst incredibly tense and engaging, the film is a non stop roller coaster of emotion. Unlike San Andreas which was a serious concept expressed in a disaster film form, Deepwater Horizon is simply a drama with action sequences but not an action film in the traditional sense.

It explores some very deep themes, like greed over the safety of the oil rig workers, or how life can be taken away so quickly. Not only is the film extremely heavy and emotional but it is very sensitive and respectful in just the right places, like when the credits role it beautifully pays tribute to all the men that died on this darkest of days. Although the film is fantastic just by story development, the special effects  were spectacular, they felt very realistic and honestly made jaws drop. Although slow building up to the main event, the story was perfectly well crafted, you felt caught up inside the film, the special effects and acting was outstanding and the tension just kept building. Much like 10 Cloverfield Lane, Deepwater Horizon had me on the edge of my seat the entire way through.

I am going to give Deepwater Horizon:

9.7/10
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