‘Deepwater Horizon’ movie gets the facts mostly right, but simplifies the blame

The movie “Deepwater Horizon” gets the facts right, and admirably so — but only up to a point. You could imagine all manner of ways in which Hollywood could have turned the blowout in the Gulf of Mexico into a more traditional disaster movie. You could invent love stories, improbable acts of square-jawed heroism, maybe throw in a sea monster. Instead, Peter Berg’s film, which describes itself as “based on true events,” generally sticks to what actually happened on April 20, 2010. The biggest exception is that the film simplifies the culpability. (I covered the oil spill for The Washington Post and later wrote a book about the BP oil spill and effort to plug the well.)

The filmmakers get high marks for capturing the texture of rig life — the immense scale of the operation, the huge pipes and machinery involved, the powerful geological forces at work, and the specialized terminology of the crew (you probably don’t have to know what a “cement bond log” is to grasp the central fact that it’s a routine and potentially critical test of well integrity, and BP chose to skip it).

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