Hollywood spent $110 million on this film, which isn’t unusual for a disaster pic. But this film, directed by Peter Berg (“Friday Night Lights,” “Lone Survivor”) and starring Mark Wahlberg, is different. The disaster, a spectacular exercise in film-making involving literally hundreds of special effects and digital artists, is secondary in the plot to the muddy, nuts-and-bolts work of a very dangerous blue collar environment.
Deepwater Horizon is filmed almost as a docu-drama focusing on the rig workers, their families, supervisor pressures and “upper management” decision-making. I have a hard time believing producers and studios placed their bets on this movie returning a profit. That’s because 1) working class characters are totally out of sync with Hollywood’s preoccupation with comic book heroes; and 2) the film is actually quite technical in its focus on the specifics of deep water well drilling.