Deepwater Horizon: 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Review

For the one hundred and twenty-six people aboard the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig, April 20, 2010, began like any normal day. Before day’s end, the world would bear witness to one of the greatest man-made disasters in U.S. history. Deepwater Horizon reveals the brave acts of the men and women who rose to the challenge—and risked everything to lead others to safety.

 Tragic movies that are based on true events like this one was are hard for me to say that I like. Mainly for the simple fact that the people that die in these stories actually died. It just feels a bit weird to me. Now that I got that out of the way I will say that this film was made extremely well. I was initially kind of against it because I felt like they were going to create a glorified action movie out of something devastating but I felt like everyone involved, from the director to the cast, did it justice. They made each of those workers on that rig look like heroes in the best possible way and the guy that was semi-responsible for things going wrong look like a total idiot. The movie comes in with a running time of 1 hour and 47 minutes and too be honest I think that it was a tad bit too long. The first 50 minutes of the film was mainly the set up for everything but I think 10 minutes could’ve been trimmed down from it and we would’ve still gotten the same film. My main gripe with the film is the casting of Mark Wahlberg. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good actor but I do feel like he tends to play different characters the same way and with him playing a character from Texas in this film it didn’t make sense that he would still have his Boston accent. Other than that I thought it was a solid film with a very engaging story. By then end of it all and as the credits rolled they showed photos of the individuals that didn’t make it and I literally had a moment where I wanted to cry. Definitely a big emotional moment to close out the film. This movie is a definite must see but just be warned that it’ll tug on your heartstrings when it’s all over. 7/10

The film looked great in 4K! The majority of the film is pretty dark and in this format you can actually see what’s going on really well. The underwater scenes seemed to be where it was the most evident. I did notice one thing that seemed very odd to me. Towards the end of the film where there was a lot of flames present there were some CG flames that actually looked really fake. To compare I went back to the standard Blu-ray version and all the flames there looked fine. So in this case 4K may have improved clarity to the point where it exposed a slight flaw.

Beyond the Horizon – A really great hour long “Making Of” the takes a look at so many aspects of the production including the cast and crew.

Captain of the Rig: Peter Berg – This feature focuses on the director and his work and contributions.

The Fury of the Rig – This a look at the main character of the film: The Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

Deepwater Surveillance – This feature looks at some unedited footage from various scenes in the film.

Participant Media Work Like an American – Includes 3 small features that touch on some of the real heroes of the tragic event and some information on construction materials.