Director Peter Berg
Staring Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, Douglas M. Griffin
Rated M
Score 3/6

On April 20th, 2010, one of the world’s largest man-made disasters occurred on the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico.

As interesting a subject for a movie The Deepwater Horizon I kind have to wonder about my decision to see this one at the friendly neighbourhood cinema, this could be an interesting DVD release for the potential of bonus content. A large portion of the audience who remember the explosion are going watch movie because they want to know what happened (and the movie did a great job of that, it even explained the process of deep-sea drilling), and while I am sitting here writing my review I can’t help but wonder that this would have been a gripping documentary or it could have been a better movie if director Peter Berg was not in the directing chair in favour of a more seasoned director.
It’s great when you see directors work with actors on multiple projects just like Berg has with Mark Wahlberg because this has the potential to offer up something great, especially when the director understands the actors that they work with. Sadly that really did not happen here the movie seemed to be emotionally flat. I suppose the blame can be shared with the writers on this one considering that the screenplay was adapted from The New York Times’ article Deepwater Horizon’s Final Hours written by David Barstow, David S. Rohde and Stephanie Saul, released on December 25, 2010. Getting the facts straight for a movie like this is important but considering this is a movie and not a news report a level of emotion is expected.