Deepwater Horizon

Peter Berg’s Deepwater Horizon is a spectacle with its heart in the right place, which is perhaps the only aspect of the film that’s truly worth mentioning. The movie is a solid disaster picture, though one with an amount of low-key high-mindedness considering that it’s portraying — in critical terms — the lead-up to one of the worst ecological catastrophes in history, the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Thankfully, for the sake of the film — and presumably director Berg, the man behind such bombast as Battleship (2012) and Lone Survivor (2013) — this was an ecological catastrophe that happened to include a lot of explosions, fertile ground for crowd-pleasing one-liners.

I say this generally in jest since Berg’s cinematic sensibilities seem to me like what would happen if Michael Bay gained sentience. What I mean is he’s all about things blowing up but has some sense of humanity, even if it comes across as a bit treacly in practice. Deepwater Horizon, in this sense, is perfect for Berg, allowing him to focus on the characters that populate the doomed, titular oil rig. This creates a sheen of characterization, though it’s not particularly deep or insightful. There’s a sort of three-pronged attack that Deepwater Horizon takes, showing the actual people (at least within movie terms) on the rig, illustrating the institutionalized negligence that led up to the disaster and then displaying the life-and-death consequences of said negligence.

Surprisingly, the smallest amount of the film is focused on that last part, as Deepwater Horizon works mostly as an expose and as a drama — and is fairly effective on both counts. Lining up the ways in which money came before safety and common sense feels daring and even a bit important. Putting this kind of greed in relief against actual human life makes total sense. But the film trips itself up with its wafer-thin characters, something that takes its toll when the stakes are ratcheted up and the audience is expected to care about the consequences at hand. There are attempts at shading these people in, but it’s all superficial. The film’s ersatz protagonist Mike (Mark Wahlberg) has a wonderful family at home. That’s about it. Crew member Andrea (Gina Rodriguez) has a Mustang that won’t start. And that’s about it for her.

While I commend the film — especially one with such an eventual penchant for property damage — for being character-driven, Deepwater Horizon is far too sketched-in here. Thankfully, a likable cast (when they’re not awash in hokey, phony Southern accents) keeps things watchable. Kurt Russell and John Malkovich are both solid. Wahlberg, with his spotty (to be generous) recent filmography, is the best he’s been in years. But all of this goes by the wayside once the film gets to its climax and Deepwater Horizon becomes just another jumble of heroic one-liners and indecipherable action, with a lot of stock characters falling by the wayside. At least this is how it works within the context of the narrative, since the credits remind you these were once all living, breathing people. The disaster aspect of the film is so noisy and inconsequential that it holds back the rest of what makes for a solid movie, making Deepwater Horizon watchable but nothing to get excited about. Rated PG-13 for prolonged intense disaster sequences and related disturbing images, and brief strong language.

Now playing at Carolina Cinemark, Carmike 10, Regal Biltmore Grande, Epic of Hendersonville.