Deepwater Horizon

How an oil rig works, honey, is first

I drink your milkshake.

Grade: B

Director: Peter Berg

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, Gina Rodriguez and John Malkovich

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 47 min.

The oil industry jargon in Deepwater Horizon spews forth like a gusher: “Schlumberger”; “negative press test”; “kill line”; “mud displacement”; “blowout preventer.” The audience is left to its own devices to divine the meaning of these terms, but that’s far from a demerit. It’s just one instance of the verisimilitude that imbues this well-made and admittedly surface-deep film about the 2010 BP oil spill.

Everything we learn about each of the film’s characters is gleaned inside their opening 30 seconds of screen time. Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg, still hitting above his weight in film choices) is the cocksure electrical tech for the titular BP-leased, Transocean-owned floating semi-submersible drilling unit. Felicia (Kate Hudson), Mike’s wife, is the fretting spouse back home. Jimmy Harrell (Kurt Russell) is the gruff, no-nonsense rig manager, who we first meet dressing down an oil exec for wearing a magenta tie, since that’s the color of a full-scale alarm (Foreshadowing!). Andrea Fleytas (Gina Rodriguez) is the capable navigation operator and the only female crewmember. And every BP suit—led by Donald Vidrine, played by John Malkovich and his gonzo Cajun accent—is a money-hungry villain eager to get the Macondo oil well flowing after going 43 days behind schedule and $53 million over budget.

Against the better judgment (we’re told) of Harrell and Williams, Vidrine orders that drilling commence despite inconsistent pressure tests on the rig’s drill and kill lines. The resulting blowout kills 11 crewmen and ultimately pumps over 200 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico, the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

Director Peter Berg’s uncompromising technical proficiency as a filmmaker is put to tremendous application here, and the result is realistic and hair-raising. Berg has an eye and ear for his setting, from the ambient noise of an offshore oil rig to the outpost’s remoteness. He also expertly conveys the catastrophic chain of events that led to the blowout and its hellish consequences. Shortly after the blowout, oil-covered gulls fly blindly onto the deck of a nearby tanker ship like a Biblical plague.

Berg has a hero worship and patriotic streak that has increasingly informed his films—The Kingdom, then Battleship, then Lone Survivor, and his upcoming Patriots Day, about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. In Deepwater Horizon, even as an inferno engulfs the oil rig, Old Glory still flaps in the foreground. While the action in Lone Survivor felt exploitative, here the real-life heroism lends heft to the visual stimulation—it’s part ‘70s disaster flick and part paean.

Lone Survivor

When did the Funky Bunch get so serious?

Grade: B

Director: Peter Berg

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster and Eric Bana

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 2 hr. 1 min.

It’s dicey to label Lone Survivor, director Peter Berg’s film about a 2005 military operation in the war-torn mountains of Afghanistan that resulted in the deaths of 19 American sailors and soldiers, as jingoistic. Indeed, Berg—an expert director when he wants—ably captures the proficiency and camaraderie of the Navy SEAL community, chiefly the four brave teammates ambushed by scores of Taliban fighters during the botched mission.

Mark Wahlberg stars as Marcus Luttrell, the SEAL whose firsthand book serves as the film’s source. Unfortunately, other compelling performers—including Ben Foster—bid a too-hasty exit due to the narrative’s “and-then-there-was-one” format.

Berg spends an inordinate amount of time earnestly extolling the military milieu, as if sharing each gung-ho incantation is a rite of passage for the honor of telling this tale. For the target audience, the firefights take on a video game quality where it takes multiple hits plus tumbles down a rocky crag to stop a SEAL, whereas faceless enemy killers go down with a single sure shot framed through a rifle scope. ‘Murica

Battleship

When terabytes attack!

Grade: D +

Director: Peter Berg

Starring: Taylor Kitsch, Brooklyn Decker, Rihanna, Liam Neeson and Tadanobu Asano

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 10 min.

Although officially based on a Hasbro’s board game, the true and more egregious inspiration for the utterly pointless Battleship is the Michael Bay formula of F/X sensory overload, insipid dialogue (“It’s been an honor serving with you, captain./The honor was all mine.”), grade school romance and rank jingoism. It’s hard to find another movie that can act as both a 2-hour-plus recruiting film for the U.S. Navy and an advertisement for Beyblades (also a Hasbro product).

Responding to deep space salutations, an alien armada splash lands in the Pacific just off the Hawaiian coast. When the terabytes start to attack, Earth’s defense falls to a stable of sailors as nondescript as the maundering invaders. Hunky Slacker (Taylor Kitsch), beau to Supermodel Actress (Brooklyn Decker) who happens to be the daughter of his Ramrod Commander (Liam Neeson), finds himself improbably in command of a ship of its crew, which includes Pop Star Moonlighting As Actor (Rihanna) and Comic Relief (Jesse Plemons).

Director Peter Berg is kind enough to afford his actors the change to exorcise some reality-based demons. Kitsch supplants John Carter as the most irksome film he’s headlined in this year, and Rihanna gets to turn a Chris Brown-by-proxy alien who bloodies her lip into literal cannon fodder.

The aliens happen to invade in conjunction with the annual RIMPAC exercises, affording Berg the ham-handed spectacle of American and Japanese sailors fighting side-by-side to defend Pearl Harbor. No matter, since the evil E.T.s are indestructible until the plot doesn’t need them to be, most notably when one ironclad predator comes to blows with a legless war hero (Gregory Gadson). While saluting wounded warriors and retired veterans is laudable, concocting ridiculous scenarios to accomplish this aim is sheer pandering. The only thing more dubious than a handful of octogenarians recommissioning the USS Missouri back into action in mere hours is the notion that Big Mo is still housing live armaments even after being converted into a floating museum

And don’t even bother to ask why the aliens can destroy most of Hong Kong, Hawaii and the bulk of the Pacific fleet without breaking a sweat yet are somehow bested a single ship, their ragtag crew and their accidental captain’s physical therapist girlfriend. Or why the aliens didn’t bring reinforcements from the start. Or when deep space radio signals started to resemble laser beams.

Battleship is for folks who think Transformers had too much plot complexity and Pearl Harbor didn’t have nearly enough flag-waving. The lone nod to the actual game comes when a computer map displays a grid of underwater buoys to track the movement of alien ships. Otherwise, there is more aptitude in trying to decide whether to plug a peg into B-3 or F-7 than this loud, mind-numbing shipwreck.

Neil Morris

POM Wonderful presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Tell me, just how safe is the 2011 Mini Cooper?

Grade: C –

Director and Starring: Morgan Spurlock

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 30 min.

There’s rich irony behind Morgan Spurlock making a documentary about the virulent infiltration of product placement into movies. Few films, and certainly no documentaries, have benefited more from brand integration than Super Size Me, Spurlock’s ballyhooed doc debut in which the filmmaker ate nothing but McDonald’s food for a month to illustrate the grip obesity has on America.

While this particular product placement was not necessarily for McDonald’s financial benefit, it was integral to the film’s popularity. The interest level in Super Size Me would not have been nearly as stratospheric had Spurlock just filmed himself for 30 days eating grandma’s apple pie and scarfing down cheeseburgers off the backyard grill. Taking on Mickey D’s gave the movie its moxie.

Seven years later, Spurlock is aghast to find marketing everywhere, even on the silver screen. So, the grand idea behind POM Wonderful presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is that Spurlock will produce a documentary about product placement in films (and society beyond) that features his efforts to solicit corporate sponsors willing to pay to place their products throughout his “docbuster.”

Camera crew in tow, Spurlock visits the boardrooms of beverage producers, hotel chains, car makers, gas stations, clothiers, and a shampoo made for both human and equine use, offering everything from commercial airtime during the film to conventional product placement during Spurlock’s many interviews, which are often held in close proximity to sponsoring planes or convenience stores. A deodorant conspicuously sits in front of Quentin Tarantino during his chat with Spurlock. And, yes, Spurlock sips a certain brand of pomegranate juice every chance he gets.

The gimmick is cute enough, but a true dissection of the issue at hand requires a ruthless, razor-sharp scalpel that Spurlock does not wield. Instead, he buttresses the film’s bona fides with celebrity cred, talking with consumer advocate Ralph Nader, Friday Night Lights director Peter Berg, Lost producer J.J. Abrams and others in between the blather of industry insiders and the particularly execrable man-on-the-street encounters that do nothing to illuminate the narrative. (“Is there truth in advertising?” is one banal topic of conversation that goes nowhere.)

Spurlock ventures out for an excursion to a Florida school system that’s selling ad space on property fencing and inside buses to generate needed revenue. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, the only empirical evidence he offers to gauge the effect of the city’s ban on outdoor advertising are random citizens remarking how they’re not as distracted as they used to be.

The film’s most eye-raising moment also illustrates futility. To demonstrate the science of “neuromarketing,” Spurlock undergoes an MRI to show how his brain reacts to certain commercial stimuli. It’s spooky, Clockwork Orange stuff, but Spurlock does not go the extra step to detail exactly how companies employ this technology to fashion their marketing plans.

The clever, truly satirical heart of The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is that despite witnessing the purpose and mechanism behind the products placed throughout this film, viewers will still be more prone to try out the shoes, shampoo, and, of course, fruit juice being openly peddled.

Yet, while Spurlock rhetorically wonders whether he’s “selling out or buying in,” these semantics disguise the film’s true moral dilemma. It takes money to makes movies, including documentaries for which both the production costs and funding sources are lower. After Super Size Me, which grossed over $20 million worldwide off a $65,000 production budget, Spurlock spent much more to make his follow-up, Where in the World In Osama Bin Laden?, which only earned around $650,000.

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is Spurlock’s vehicle to access the corporate quick money needed to finance his latest cinematic vanity project. In return, he attempts to insulate himself from criticism by meekly dressing down the very profiteering he’s exploiting. It’s a huckster’s dream: Spurlock makes his movie, the sponsors promote their brand, and the film distributor pockets a tidy sum. The audience is the one left holding the proverbial shopping bag.

Neil Morris

*Originally published at Indyweek.com - http://goo.gl/bvwXr