Deepwater Horizon

DEEPWATER HORIZON (Peter Berg, 2016)

The somber drama and action in DEEPWATER HORIZON recreate the events surrounding the worst oil spill in United States history, but despite the good intentions of honoring those who were endangered, injured, and killed, it’s kind of the cinematic equivalent of a commemorative plate. The imagery calls for hushed voices and bowed heads in solemn remembrance while also stoking righteous anger about why the accident occurred. The action impresses as a technical exercise, yet being thrust into the catastrophe with the men and women aboard the doomed rig remains a curiously distant viewing experience.

Deepwater Horizon sat about forty miles off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico with the task of preparing wells for others to come in and extract the oil. The crew is already more than a month behind schedule in April 2010 when the crew chief Jimmy Harrell (Kurt Russell) and chief electronics technician Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg) return. BP employees are pushing to speed up the process, even if it involves cutting some corners on safety. After a test result that raises some questions as to what it means, oil company man Vidrine (John Malkovich) insists that work proceed as though everything is shipshape.

Problems aren’t manifested immediately, but when they arrive, they have devastating consequences. The blowout and subsequent explosions engulf the rig in flames. The fire could seemingly burn forever because of all that oil gushing onto the ship from deep below the ocean. The distance from ship to shore means that rescuers cannot get to them right away, meaning that those who survived the initial blasts, especially those who did not get to a lifeboat, remain in danger from the fire and flying debris.

Director Peter Berg’s spatial awareness of the offshore platform provides capable guidance around the disaster site and conveys the sheer size of what is above and below the water. The hellish environment blooms when the bright interiors are smeared in orange and smothered in black. Berg batters the audience with the chaos and terror that would be felt when trapped in such a situation. Screenwriters Matthew Michael Carnahan and Matthew Hand do a solid job of laying out the process that contributed to what happened. While the trauma in the moment and the reasons for it are undeniable, DEEPWATER HORIZON fails to connect on a human level.

Establishing scenes of Deepwater Horizon workers with their families and the tearful news and reunions in the aftermath are meant to provide the emotional connections in an otherwise impersonal film. These scenes simply aren’t sufficient in building vested concerns in them beyond the standard response of not wanting people to be horribly killed. DEEPWATER HORIZON doesn’t spare BP for its contributing role to the disaster, but the cartoonishly villainous Malkovich performance jerks the film out of the realistic depiction Berg sets out to achieve.

Grade: C

Daddy's Home

DADDY’S HOME (Sean Anders, 2015)

As a relatively new stepfather to two kids in DADDY’S HOME, Brad Whitaker (WIll Ferrell) wants nothing more in the world than for the children to accept him as a paternal figure. It seems that his relationship with Dylan (Owen Vaccaro) and Megan (Scarlett Estevez) is finally reaching that point. Dylan wants to speak to him about his problems with a bully, and Megan asks him to accompany her to a father/daughter dance. When the kids’ biological father Dusty (Mark Wahlberg) calls Sara (Linda Cardellini), their mom and his ex-wife, to say that he’s coming for a visit, she resists the idea, but Brad welcomes the opportunity for him to maintain a role in Dylan and Megan’s lives.

It doesn’t take long for the mild-mannered, smooth jazz radio executive to understand why Sara expressed concerns about inviting his cool, fit counterpart into their house, yet Brad continues to give Dusty the benefit of the doubt even when he’s actively undermining his authority at home and upstaging him at work. Their competition for the affection of the kids escalates to absurd measures. More critically, it strains Brad and Sara’s marriage, which was Dusty’s intention all along.

DADDY’S HOME seeks to mine a stepfather’s insecurities and desire for total acceptance in a family in the way that MEET THE PARENTS found humor in wanting to impress future in-laws. While Ferrell’s Brad starts on a firmer foundation, he’s like Ben Stiller’s MEET THE PARENTS protagonist in that both face off with hostile, more stereotypically masculine men fending them off as perceived interlopers. Brad’s situation may be more specific than one about the universal anxiety in wishing to gain approval from a significant other’s parents, but what he struggles with is not significantly different than any outsider striving to get inside a group.

The opportunities to satirize the degrees to which an adoptive and biological father will passive-aggressively and nakedly combat for supremacy are seemingly countless, yet DADDY’S HOME contains about enough ideas to fill a film trailer. Although there’s some amusement in expected scenes of gift-giving one-upmanship and handyman prowess or lack thereof, the film lacks imagination. Dusty’s less showy efforts to erode Brad’s reputation, like his insinuations of racism, tend to be funnier than the more obvious gags.

The film’s stylistic tug of war is waged between the heart-warming, all-ages comedy it wants to be and the nasty streak residing in the hearts of its adversaries. DADDY’S HOME feels as though it’s restraining Brad and Dusty from unleashing hell on each other and, in its relative politeness, mutes the humor in their clashes. Ferrell has his moments as he tries to be a good sport while being humiliated. Wahlberg can be funny playing a caricature of male ruggedness and unflappability. DADDY’S HOME just doesn’t let them run as wild as they could and suffers for it.

Grade: C