Review: ‘Deepwater Horizon’ is thrilling, terrifying retelling of 2010 disaster

“Deepwater Horizon”

Rated PG-13 (1:47)

***

Opens today

Anyone looking for a nuanced, serious exploration of either the environmental, political and economic fallout from the explosive Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010 — the largest oil spill and worst ecological disaster in U.S. history — or the corporate culture that contributed to it — probably should avoid “Deepwater Horizon,” the film that dramatizes the hours leading up to and during the incident in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 people.

But as an effects-driven disaster movie starring two totems of testosterone — Mark Wahlberg and Kurt Russell — and directed by Peter Berg (“Lone Survivor,” “Friday Night Lights”), “Deepwater Horizon” is alarmingly effective.

Berg and screenwriters Matthew Michael Carnahan (“World War Z,” “State of Play”) and Matthew Sand (“Ninja Assassin”) may have sacrificed subtlety for spectacle, but, in this case, it turns out not to be such a bad trade.

Wahlberg is Mike Williams, the real-life chief electronics technician who saved several lives on the evening of April 2010 when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded like a bomb. But we meet him several hours before that on the mainland when he’s playing with his young daughter (Stella Allen) and his wife, Felicia (Kate Hudson).

He’s just one of several characters whose lives are going to collide that night, including crew chief Jimmy Harrell (Kurt Russell), who gets presented with a workplace safety award just before everything goes south, and bottom-line obsessed BP exec Donald Vidrine (John Malkovich).

If Mike and Jimmy represent an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay and all that’s good in the world that the phrase implies, sniveling Donald is a stand-in for its opposite: corporate penny-pinching, cost-cutting and profit-seeking to the point of putting lives at risk. No doubt, if Berg could have found a way to have him tying a damsel-in-distress onto train tracks on the top of an oil platform, he would have.

So when Donald ignores Jimmy’s stern advice not to proceed with work because a certain test wasn’t done — they’re 43 days behind schedule after all! — the audience probably should put off any bathroom breaks or snack-bar runs.

Because everyone knows what’s coming — and it is spectacular.

From the thunderstorm of oil to the leaping, raging flames, Berg keeps everything moving as quickly as the thick liquid is flooding. At times, it’s difficult to tell who’s who and what’s happening because everyone is covered in, and slipping and sliding on, rivers of oil. But it’s cinematic chaos of the highest order.

Yet, for all of that, while Mike, Jimmy and others come across as heroes, they’re not superheroes. They remain relatable and mirrors of the real people they’re portraying.

There’ve been documentaries about Deepwater Horizon, and those probably offer more depth and background. But as a depiction of the horror that took place on that one night in April, “Deepwater Horizon” goes off like a gusher.