With his wife (Hudson) at home, Mike (Wahlberg) heads off for a three-week stint at sea on the offshore rig Deepwater Horizon, a 35-minute flight from land. As chief electrician, he works closely with boss Jimmy (Russell), drilling foreman Jason (Suplee) and pilot Andrea (Rodriguez). But the BP executives Don and Bob (Malkovich and Leland) are pressuring them to make up a schedule delay by hedging around some safety tests. Sure enough, the well is about to blow, engulfing the floating platform in flames.

Eleven crew members died in the disaster, and the film is careful to honour their memories, both in dramatic scenes and an epilogue. Writers Carnahan and Sand sculpt the story with standard disaster movie beats. We know tragedy is coming, Titanic-style, so every scene features some sort of corny harbinger. Thankfully, some are rather clever, such as when Mike's daughter (Allen) explains how drilling platforms work using a can of Coke and ballpoint pen.

Other moments aren't quite so subtle, but the actors have an edgy naturalism. Each character is smart and tenacious, including the company men who essentially cause the disaster by ignoring safety issues. Wahlberg, Russell, O'Brien (as a driller) and Kirkpatrick (as a crane operator) get the most heroic roles. But it's the sidelined Rodriguez who most powerfully wins over the audience, an irony clearly lost on filmmakers who so gleefully revel in masculinity.

Andrea is a clear-thinker who has moments of believable doubt and fear, like a real person, which actually makes her braver than everyone else on-screen. And this is where the film wobbles: Berg and Wahlberg simply can't allow the men to look fragile or vulnerable, unless they're the designated baddies. So the triumphant rah-rah tone seems to revel in moments of grisliness. In the end, at least film has such a realistic, thrilling style that we feel like we have survived the ordeal ourselves. But by over-celebrating the heroes, the film kind of misses the point.

themes, language, violence

.16