By Mark HadleyTuesday 4 Oct 2016The Big PictureMoviesReading Time: 2 minutes
Think Titanic, San Andreas and The Towering Inferno all rolled into one.
Deepwater Horizon is based on the true story of a cataclysmic oil fire that broke out on an oil drilling platform 65 km off the coast of Louisiana in 2010. It resulted in the deaths of 11 crew members and the dumping of 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, making it the worst oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry.
RATED: Deepwater Horizon is rated M for mature themes and coarse language
AUDIENCE: This is a flick for fans of high-stakes thrillers – if you like to see Mark Wahlberg running, jumping around explosions while everyone else panics, this is your film.
WHAT’S GOOD: It provides a heroic back story to the environmental disaster that claimed the headlines.
WHAT’S NOT: It’s incredibly black and white – the oil company is bad, the oil workers are good, and oil is this monster that’s just waiting to burst out of the earth and pollute everything.
SPIRITUALLY SPEAKING: Hero Mike Williams warns an executive engaged in risky practices, “Hope ain’t a tactic Don.” The Christian warning about the afterlife fits neatly with this advice. When there’s a one-shot situation that’s potentially catastrophic as death staring you in the face, you don’t leave it up to blind hope. But that’s what most people seem to be doing. We don’t look because, like the oil execs, we don’t want to find something we don’t want to see. But ‘hope’ of this kind isn’t a tactic any sensible person employs when dealing with God.
RELEASE DATE: Thursday, October 6