I finally had the chance to go see a movie with my office colleagues after the last time we did for My Stupid Boss. Unlike then when we were able to combine 2 group companies into the so called "nonton bareng" event and almost 40 people altogether, this time there were less people who watched this movie together due to various reasons. Nevertheless we still could enjoy this movie as it was telling the story related to our company's line of business in the oil & gas industry. Anyway what was the story about? Let's find out shall we?
Brief Story Line
Movie started with the introduction of our main character Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg - Boogie Nights, The Departed, Max Payne and many others) who was having good times with his wife Felicia (Kate Hudson - Almost Famous, Fool's Gold, Bride Wars etc) and their daughter. It was mentioned that he was getting ready to go working offshore for another 3 weeks. We were also introduced with Andrea Fleytas (Gina Rodriguez - Jane The Virgin TV series) who seemed to be very good in cars, especially her mustang.
Later on we would be introduced to Mr. Jimmy (Kurt Russel - Escape from New York, Poseidon, Tombstone etc) who was the person in charge of Deepwater Horizon, the semi submersible mobile offshore drilling unit which was working at the Macondo prospect oil field. He was getting ready to go by helicopter with 2 British Petroleum (BP) high officer visiting the oil rig. The 3 of them together with Mike and Andrea went and arrived on board of Deepwater Horizon only to found out that the people from Schlumberger who were supposed to do a cement pressure test were told to go home by BP executive Vidrine (John Malkovich - Con Air, Being John Malkovich, Red etc). Apparently due to the drilling activity already late by 43 days, Vidrine wanted to save some time and money by immediately do the drilling which was rejected by Mr. Jimmy.
Meanwhile, Mike being the Electronic Tecnician (ET) head had to handle various electrical problems on the rig such as the communication, the AC and so many other problems. He also seemed to be close with most of the people on board, such as Caleb (Dylan O'Brien - The Maze Runner, Teen Wolf TV series etc), Jason Anderson, Shane Roshto and others. After doing the negative test that Mr. Jimmy insisted on doing before drilling, he was still not convinced as the test result was not conclusive. However, Vidrine was able to give argumentation that seemed logical to Mr. Jimmy and Mike. When they finished doing the test second time, the result seemed to be more convincing. Vidrine insisted to continue the drilling and finally Mr. Jimmy reluctantly give the go ahead.
The first activity to be done before drilling the oil would be to take out the mud first. The mud would be transferred to the nearest Tug named Damon Bankston which was located near the rig. This tug would have significant role later. As you would have guessed there was indeed problem during this activity and things started to get terribly wrong on board of Deepwater Horizon.
Without giving too much detail of what happened next, I better let you see the movie by itself.
End of Brief Story Line
This movie was having very slow pace for the first part which took around 45 minutes. Peter Berg, the director whose works included The Rundown, Friday Night Lights, Hancock, and Lone Survivor, seemed to be a very detailed oriented person and I think he wanted to make sure that the events prior to the incident were mostly captured. The thing is, those parts seemed to be very technical and for people who are not accustomed to works at oil rig (offshore), the scenes became too long and resulted to a little bit boredom. As someone who is working at the back office for companies in oil & gas industry, I was personally interested in seeing this part, but I do not think the general audience would enjoy it.
However, the second part of the movie when the incident started to be shown, the pace of the movie suddenly become so fast, and the tense feeling totally crept our mind. My feeling when seeing this part is that people would forget about the slow pace in the beginning and totally enjoyed the rush, the scary moments, the sadness, the relief, the dramatic & touching moments and so many other feelings later.
I also loved the special effects and the sound effects of this movie. The creation of Deepwater Horizon seemed to be very real life. The makeup effect also was very believable. We also would be enjoying the performance of John Malkovich portraying a BP executive who just want to save some money (though I understand that BP also released a statement highlighting that the events in this movie seemed to be only putting the blame on BP when it was due to multiple companies fault). I believe the moral of the story here is that you can never be too cheap when dealing with safety, especially in a high risk environment such as an oil rig.
So for those of you who enjoy watching movies of accident based on true events with good special effects, sound effects and dramatic moments, then this movie would certainly be a good choice. But if you want to have high paced full action movies from beginning till end, then you have to be patient for a while in the beginning before you can enjoy it. As for people who are working in the oil & gas industry, I would recommend to watch this movie to just have our minds opened (especially for back office people).
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Note:
Deepwater Horizon was burnt and sank 2 days after the explosion and resulted to casualties and injuries. Many of the companies involved like Transocean (the owner & operator of Deepwater Horizon), BP, MOEX Offshore who owned some stake of the well, Halliburton and several others had to pay penalties etc due to the oil spill resulted from this incident after the various inquiries and investigations on this event. For more detail information on this subject, you can read in Wikipedia.
No comments:
Post a Comment