Educational Media Reviews Online

On April 20, 2010, the BP drilling platform Deepwater Horizon exploded, killing eleven workers and leaving behind a broken underwater well head, spilling millions of gallons of raw crude into the Gulf of Mexico. The film makers cite, from the very onset of the catastrophe, the mismanagement, denial, and shady tactics of BP to attempt to control its losses. Further, the film demonstrates how the platform’s lack of a simple half-million dollar automatic shut-off switch could have prevented the calamity.

The film is positively relentless, as it casts light on poor decisions, inadequate policies, and overall mismanagement by BP, the EPA, local government, and even the Obama administration. While the filmmakers do indeed abundantly address the impacts of the oil spill itself, the majority of the work focuses on BP’s use of toxic dispersants to scatter the oil into small particles. This was done to eliminate large slicks, but marine biologists and other scientists contend that the amount of oil in the gulf was not at all diminished by these chemicals. These small particles are also more prone to affect organisms lower on the food chain, amplifying the oil’s effects. Throughout the documentary, the audience is presented with sobering visuals, including a view of the disaster from the sky that shows the oil spill in relation to the very curvature of the Earth.

The film was painstakingly researched, displaying documents of importance, then magnifying and/or highlighting significant passages and dates. When BP instituted a gag order on its employees and anyone else in close proximity to the BP response team, the film crew took it upon themselves to interview homeowners, business people, and local officials when possible. While the spill’s environmental impact is most certainly emphasized throughout the work, there are no shortages of other stakeholders—such as local tourist interests, who conspicuously enabled BP’s cover-up measures and culpably downplayed the hazards in the water. This film does an outstanding job in effectively elaborating upon chemical tests done on the water, while not alienating the audience with jargon or an overabundance of technical terminology. The work concludes with a flurry of summative data, including estimations of total spillage, and the tolls on marine wildlife and the ecosystem. It reminds the viewers that although the $4.25 billion penalty for BP was the largest criminal resolution in US history, this represents less than 4% of BP’s projected profits over 5-year collection period.

By some estimates, this catastrophe was the largest human-made disaster the world has ever seen. This outstanding documentary turns an account of this catastrophe into a dismaying case study of corporate corruption and government complacence. While it would have been easy for the film makers to buffet the audience with tear-jerking image after image of wildlife victimized by the spill, they instead skillfully and inexorably examine the responsibilities of each party in the causes of the disaster, the initial containment, the protracted dispersant campaign, and the aftermath. It is simply a definitive work on this topic for mainstream consumption.