The actor is a believable everyman engineer in a harrowing, courageous account of the 2010 oil rig tragedy – and the corporate greed that caused it

In the safe, sanitised world of the multiplex, where product placement and brand partnerships reign supreme, it’s rare to see a mainstream film with the guts to double as a takedown of a multi-billion dollar company. But, after watching Peter Berg’s surprisingly yet deservedly angry restaging of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, which caused 11 deaths and the biggest oil spill in history, it’ll take a minor PR miracle to restore the average moviegoer’s faith in BP.

On paper, Berg is a poor choice for the material. His last film at sea was Battleship, a soulless, swaggering Transformers knock-off based on a board game, and his last with star Mark Wahlberg was the viscerally effective but heavy-handed Navy Seals drama Lone Survivor. He also tried and failed to make something resembling an issues movie with the forgettable Saudi-set actioner The Kingdom. But for the most part in this effective disaster thriller, he keeps the flag-waving jingoism to a minimum, to focus on the devastating tragedy at hand.

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Source: Guardian Environment