Deepwater Horizon: Review

I was honestly getting sick of the trailer for this movie. I wasn't very interested. It looked like another Mark Wahlberg blockbuster. And this time, it's on an oil rig. So a blockbuster about an oil rig starring Mark Wahlberg and Kate Hudson didn't sound amazing to me.

"What did you think?" I actually liked this movie. It's not the best movie, but it's fun. Mark Wahlberg shined more in this movie than he usually does, especially in the ending scene. I really bought Mark Wahlberg as a dad. He delivered his lines very well I thought. Kurt Russell and John Malkovich were good as usual. The movie is well made. Not all good stories translate to film well, but I think this movie was the best it could possibly be. It had good editing, for the most part, but sometimes it got a bit weird. It's got good cinematography, for the most part as well.

My complaints: The music in the movie is kinda cheesy. It felt all patriotic and inspiring. Sometimes the music would make a scene feel really cheesy, basically "DUN DUN DUUUUUUNNN!!!". It didn't work until the final scene with Mark Wahlberg. Some of the cinematography was a bit rough in the opening scene on the rig. We follow the characters through the oil rig and the camera is handheld, and sometimes that handheld camera work gets very shaky and distracting. Some of the scenes with the workers trying to get off the rig were very dark. It was hard to tell who was who for a lot of the movie.

The worst thing about this movie is Gina Rodriguez and Kate Hudson. I had never seen a movie with Kate Hudson before I saw this, but she wasn't very good in this movie in my opinion. She had some really bad cliche dialog. Gina Rodriguez played a character named Andrea Fleytas. She was really bad in this movie. She ruined every scene she was in. She was very unconvincing. That's it for my complaints.

The opening of the movie I thought was strong. The first act developed the characters pretty well I thought. The dialog was pretty great for the most part. The workers had scenes that made me laugh, which makes sense because the characters are probably really bored. The movie doesn't feel too long. The ending scene I thought worked very well. I won't spoil it for you. It did something I didn't expect. The music worked very well for that scene. It was a very satisfying scene that I thought worked very well. I felt the anticipation of waiting for the oil rig to blow up. I felt that tense and panicking feeling that the workers had. Once the oil rig blows the movie only slows down a couple times to show Kate Hudson being worried about her husband. And the scenes showing the rig on fire did impress me. I admit that I did think "Oh crap. DANG!" And it did honor the real life people who died in the explosion. If you've ever seen the movie Remember the Titans, the actor who played Louie Lastik shows up in the movie, which surprised me. 

So overall the movie ended up being better than I expected. I would recommend maybe seeing Deepwater Horizon in standard and not IMAX. I would still recommend The Magnificent Seven instead this weekend if you haven't seen it yet.