[Deepwater] knows what it is: not a memorial or a political indictment, but merely a movie.

Clumsy exposition aside, the dialogue feels authentic, tossing around the shorthand and lingo of the job, and the script is precise on the details without getting overwhelmed by them.

Viewers will leave with a fine sense of how it felt to be on that blazing rig, but they'll still have plenty of questions about how and why things went so wrong.

Despite the star power, there are no characters here. Thankfully Peter Berg's capacity for shooting exciting action sequences is front and center and the night of the BP oil spill provides him with plenty of spectacle.