The players in disaster movies often seem simply like chess pieces on a board that's about to be kicked over (and then set on fire, and then thrown into a volcano), but that's not the case here. Kurt Russell and Mark Wahlberg are old pros at playing affable everymen thrust into improbably violent scenarios, and the rest of the cast feels similarly grounded. Berg knows when to sit back and let the slice-of-life stuff play out, and that makes up the first half of Deepwater Horizon.

Read the full review. by Ben Coleman