Deepwater Horizon (2016)

In 2010, Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg) and his wife, Felicia (Kate Hudson), drove together to the heliport.  He was leaving for a 3-week stint on the Deepwater Horizon.  At the heliport, he met James "Mr. Jimmy" Harrell (Kurt Russell) and Andrea Fleytas (Gina Rodriguez), who were also going to the Deepwater Horizon.  A pair of BP executives were included as well.  As the helicopter hove into view, Mr. Jimmy was surprised to see a ship near the platform.  That generally indicated that the well was ready and the platform would travel to a new site shortly.  When the helicopter landed, he briefly conferred with a test team who did not give satisfactory answers to Mr. Jimmy.  What was the situation?

Mike and Mr. Jimmy found Don Vidrine (John Malkovich), a BP Executive, in a good mood.  This particular site had been running over cost and beyond schedule, but he was now certain that the well was ready to hand off to an oil extraction platform.  They could move to a new site.  Mr. Jimmy was doubtful and wanted a test.  The test was inconclusive, but Vidrine was confident.  Though the Deepwater Horizon was owned by Transocean, it was currently leased to BP.  Jimmy deferred to BP's decision.

As it turns out, the well was not hunky dory.  In fact, it was a timebomb that exploded, sending pressure and oil into the platform with destructive force.  The oil soon caught fire and more explosions wracked the doomed platform.  Could they cap the well?  Could they even escape the platform?

The movie opens and closes with the testimony of the actual crew, including Mike and Mr. Jimmy, neither of whom look much like Wahlberg or Russell.  As with the investigation that followed the explosions, the movie pins the blame on BP.

Though true, this is a disaster movie right out of the 1970s.  I was reminded of The Towering Inferno as everything exploded and everyone fled the spreading fire.  Mike proves to be the central character who ties the story into a clean narrative.  Wahlberg does a great job.  Russell is excellent as Mr. Jimmy and Malkovich is terrific as the supercilious executive who is humbled when his claims are proved wrong.

Mostly good popcorn fun, but the conclusion is mostly a downer.  Is this a movie for entertainment or is it a documentary?

Bone Tomahawk (2015)

A pair of bushwhackers flee from a posse and find themselves in a peculiar Indian burial ground.  There is eerie howling that doesn't sound natural.  Suddenly, one is shot in the throat and the other flees for his life.  Eleven days later, he finds himself in the town of Bright Hope.  His manner attracts the attention of Sheriff Hunt (Kurt Russell).  As he tries to run, Hunt shoots him in the leg.  With the town doctor drunk, Mrs. O'Dwyer (Lili Simmons) is summoned to the jail to extract the bullet.  By morning, the prisoner, the deputy, and Mrs. O'Dwyer are missing along with half a dozen horses.  The stable boy is dead.  An unusual arrow is found and a local Indian identifies it as belonging to troglodytes, a savage band of cannibals who reside in the Valley of Starving Men.  Sheriff Hunt, Deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins), John Brooder (Matthew Fox) and Arthur O'Dwyer (Patrick Wilson) set out to rescue the missing people.

Though the story has a horror element to it, it mostly plays as a standard western until the final act.  The four men who set our are not well-suited to the task.  O'Dwyer has a broken leg, the reason why he was still in town rather than herding cattle north to Wyoming with most of the town's other men.  Though urged to stay behind, he must try to rescue his wife.  Brooder is a dandy who kills without compunction and has a special dislike for Indians.  He is the best equipped of the group.  Sheriff Hunt is competent but has only nominal command over Brooder and O'Dwyer.  Chicory is an elderly fellow who talks endlessly, much to the irritation of his fellows.

As promised, the troglodytes are cannibals who speak by howling and keep their 'meals' alive until it's time to dine.  Their weapons are amazingly crude but lethal.  Of note, they use an animals jawbone as an axe, the titular bone tomahawk.

The movie has one particularly funny bit.  Brooder claims to be the smartest member of the posse.  When challenged on that by Chicory, he states that O'Dwyer and Hunt are married and Chicory is a widower.  So?  "Smart men don't get married."  QED.  :)

The movie is overlong and spends much of its time on the journey to the Valley of the Starving Men.  Though they encounter hazards along the way, it is never the troglodytes.  Imagine Aliens where three quarters of the movie is spent before the characters engage the aliens.  There is a lot of time spent on the interrelationships of the posse and not a lot of fighting the monsters.

Just okay.

The Hateful Eight

The opening of the film is shown in the trailer: Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) stops a stagecoach on a snowy Wyoming road and asks, "Room for one more?"  It turns out that the stagecoach was hired by John Ruth (Kurt Russell), a bounty hunter who is escorting a murderess, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), to be hanged.  Thanks to a blizzard, the stagecoach gets stuck at a way station populated by an assortment of men who may or may not be who they claim to be.

 

This is not an action movie.  When the shooting does happen, it is quick and bloody.  Mostly, this is a suspense movie.  One of the big influences was The Thing (1982) with Kurt Russell.  There is a lot to like though Samuel L. Jackson steals the show.  Most of the acting is very good but Michael Madsen was miscast.  His soft jowls and long flouncy hair just didn't fit with the hard-living of the American West.  Also, Channing Tatum is a bit young for the role he played or perhaps his sibling was a bit old - 18 year age gap.  Rather than sibling, maybe it should have been parent?

 

When the entire story unfolds and every character is exposed for who they are, one wonders why the plan was what it was.  Why the subterfuge?  Right out the gate, John Ruth is busy hammering a plank in the door with one wrist handcuffed to Daisy.  He was an easy target.

Though a bit too generous with the blood, an inordinate amount of which seems to shower the same character, it is good popcorn fun.  Despite its three hour runtime, it goes surprisingly quickly.