Talkie Tuesday: Deepwater Horizon

"I'll call you back, I'll call you back ..."

Hello everyone!

So.

It's back to my little notebook with reviews, since I haven't had the chance to actually watch something a little more current (I blame our country's Dancing with the Stars for eating up so much of my free time!). But hey, it's all good! I still have things to chew through. 

And of course one of the first I pick up is the one that made me curse, shiver, tear up, and outright bawl at my computer screen at the time when I put it on.

See every once in a while, I'll torture myself with some sort of 'based on a true story' movie.

You know, like I did with In the Heart of the Sea or Everest.

Usually, I have nightmares after, which I think may be the point.

Tonight's movie is definitely one of those. It's called Deepwater Horizon, after all.

I'm sure if I say the name a couple of times, there'll be heads lifting somewhere. Maybe not in Europe - or maybe even so.

After all, the oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon disaster is probably the biggest in recent US history.

Obviously it was only a matter of time when a movie would see the light of day, but I was quite surprised, when cross-referencing and checking, about just HOW fast that happened. But anyway, let's just jump straight in, shall we?

The ensemble cast features veterans Kurt Russell and Mark Wahlberg pitted against John Malkovich, but equally there's some new faces going about like Dylan O'Brien and Gina Rodriguez. And let's not forget Kate Hudson, either!

With all that said, we actually begin our movie during a shift change where one group of oil rig workers flies out home and a new one comes in to take over the job. I can only imagine just what a massive production this has to be, considering it's a lot like deployment in that families don't get to see their loved ones for a full shift of, what, three or four weeks at a time? Geez!

Anyway, Wahlberg's character is up next, leaving behind a sassy wife and even sassier daughter (who just wants a baby brother, thank you VERY much) and upon arriving at the actual rig they start getting some bad juju all around.

By they, I mean Mark and Kurt, obviously.

Somehow or other, the brass wants to push this oil drilling scheme, regardless of what they have to avoid to get there, but the experienced workers are a little bit shocked that the team who was SUPPOSED to run tests on the new well pretty much got sent off-rig without getting to do anything.

This won't fly, but neither will the full testing either, because, see, they're behind schedule, and that means they're losing money (also, tests are costly, don't you know).

Still, a pressure test needs to be conducted in any event, and so that's the next step before ANYTHING else can be done - while Mark Wahlberg probably wonders why he couldn't call Transformers for help since the entire rig needs an upgrade by now before they can start pumping oil.

Brass won't have it in any event - even though the test results come back funky, and the bad juju is starting to catch on with the experienced workers on the rig who have a bad, bad feeling about this, the brass pushes - aka this means Mr Malkovich pushes - and the drilling begins.

Of course this is the start of all the problems.

Since, you know, there's a massive erruption and it all happens too fast for the alarms to pick it up, to the point of absurdity when Gina Rodriguez wants to hit the kill switch when she sees the flames shooting to the sky but her superior barks at her that there's a way things are done, following certain commands, and kill switch isn't one of them.

Of course he's a textbook kind of guy who freezes when he actually sees the fire, but you know, the fact that he was TALKING ABOUT RED TAPE WHILE THE OIL RIG WAS STARTING TO EXPLODE IS ENOUGH.

What follows is a massive evacuation without any regard for what the brass thought was a good idea of a safety protocol, because, screw the rules, you don't want to wait the fire out, you feel me?

At that point, the tanker which had been waiting to take away the mud pumped pre-oil away sends out a first official SOS after the explosion had already been picked up by radars and ships and coast guards begin converging on the site.

In grand total, the final tally of the deceased probably could have been much, much worse, but the charges for willful manslaughter against the brass were dropped back in 2015.

For me, the most heartbreaking moments of the movie remain the reunions of loved ones and oil rig workers, many of whom never returned to the oil industry or indeed to sea again after the disaster which occured on the Deepwater Horizon.

And if the movie is to be believed even just a little bit ... it just goes to show how Man's greed and impatience need to take a backseat.

Pronto.

xx

*images and video not mine