“Deepwater Horizon” is the most recent disaster of a film to hit the big screen. The film is about the biggest oil spill in U.S. history, which occurred in April 2010 after the oil rig named Deepwater Horizon blew up.

Peter Berg (“Lone Survivor”, “Hancock”) directs the film and Mark Wahlberg (“The Fighter”, “Lone Survivor”) stars as Mike Williams. Actors Kurt Russell, John Malkovich, Gina Rodriguez and Kate Hudson also star in the film.

The film focuses on Mike Williams, a worker on the Deepwater Horizon, who helped several of the crew escape following its explosion. At the start of the film, Mike Williams wakes up next to his wife on the day he is set to ship out to work on the Deepwater Horizon for an extended period of time. Although the film shifts back and forth between characters, Williams is clearly the lead of the film.

“Deepwater Horizon” follows Williams as he eats breakfast, watches his daughter show her project to him and then as he ships off to the oil rig. As soon as he arrives things are looking bad.

Representatives from BP Global, the oil and gas company are interfering with the workers’ usual procedures. From there the conflict really escalates.

An issue with “Deepwater Horizon” is that the film only seems to exist for the explosion. Even though the audience gets a great deal of time with the characters before the explosion, it seems to be its one and only selling point.

The focus on the explosion is also how the film was marketed. In previews and advertisements, the focus was the oil rig explosion and the courage shown by the people within the rig. Everything the audience really needs to see is in the trailer.

Not to say that “Deepwater Horizon” is not a good film, because it is. The film gets strong performances from its cast and is, technically, well made.

The problem with “Deepwater Horizon” is it opts out of strong character development and relies solely on its disaster portion. Although the film spends a lot of time with the characters before the disaster, it never feels like the audience is getting to know the characters.

The audience only seems to be told facts about them. The audience is not given the luxury of developing a strong understanding of the characters and how they function deep down as human beings.

Considering that “Deepwater Horizon” seems to live for its disaster portion of the film and has a great lead-up to it, it is not good that the payoff is not satisfying. The reason for this could be that everything worth seeing was in the trailer, but it is also worth mentioning that a great portion of the crew members’ departure from the oil rig is really hard to make out at times.

There are many shots during the film’s final act where it is hard to see what is going on in the frame. Audiences can barely make out anything through the fire, which, perhaps, was the point. It is possible that Berg wanted the audience to feel as lost as the characters in the film.

However, it is a technique that should never be overly used to the point where the audience cannot even comprehend what it is they are supposed to be seeing. Having too many frames where the audience is unclear of what is going on takes the audience out of the movie and the experience it is supposed to give them.

6.4/10.0