Deepwater Horizon. 2016. USA. Directed by Peter Berg. Screenplay by Matthew Michael Carnahan, Matthew Sand, based on an article by David Barstow, David Rohde, Stephanie Saul. With Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, John Malkovich, Gina Rodriguez, Dylan O'Brien, Kate Hudson. DCP. 107 min.
Coming only five years after Hurricane Katrina, the headline-dominating Deepwater Horizon explosion of 2010—which resulted in the deaths of 11 workers and remains the worst and most damaging accidental oil spill in history—couldn’t help but seem like overkill. Again, the news media was filled with images of an ailing, damaged Gulf Coast, this time trading haunting footage of floodwaters and abandoned poor people on rooftops for images of oil-slicked water, ecological devastation, an entire generation of fisherman being put out of business, and a seemingly eternal fire burning at sea.
The incident became fodder for everything from a running South Park gag about laughable corporate apologies to this mythologizing blockbuster, a fascinating attempt to wed working-class action-hero aesthetics (à la Michael Bay) to a real-life environmental disaster. Mark Wahlberg stars as an electronics technician-turned-everyman savior who must navigate an escalating pile-on of catastrophe. The film—released only a couple of months before Donald Trump’s first election—remains a telling example of that peculiarly Hollywood brand of big-budget conservatism, one as suspicious of the rigors of capital as it is beholden to them.