Image: BP GroupBP has turned movie critic, and a hyper critical one at that, after the Deepwater Horizon movie goes on general release.
On the IMDB web site, the new movie Deepwater Horizon has a score of 7.6, which is not bad for a film of this genre. By all accounts, as disaster movies go, it’s not a bad one.
It is just that Deepwater Horizon is meant to be a true story.
We all know that Hollywood movies have interesting twists on the truth, but then they are not really supposed to be taken seriously. Here is a hint, if you want to know about Winston Churchill don’t take Churchill, the Hollywood Years, in which Christian Slater plays the part of an American GI called Winston Churchill, who practically wins World War 2 singled handed, too seriously.
But Deepwater Horizon is a movie with a supposedly serious theme about corporate greed.
Mark Wahlberg plays the part of Mike Williams, who really was something of a hero in real life when the disaster occurred.
But there are those, such as shareholders in BP, many of whom are shareholders via their pension schemes, who felt BP was unfairly punished for being British, unlike US firms Transocean and Halliburton who also worked on the ill-fated oil rig.
And now the movie is here, with John Malkovich playing a ‘suit’ and BP is in the firing line of US opinion all over again.
In a statement, BP said: “The Deepwater Horizon movie is Hollywood's take on a tragic and complex accident. It is not an accurate portrayal of the events that led to the accident, our people, or the character of our company.”
The statement went on to say that the movie: “Ignores the conclusions reached by every official investigation: that the accident was the result of multiple errors made by a number of companies."
And: “Coming as it does six-and-a-half years after the accident, the movie also does not reflect who we are today, the lengths we've gone to restore the Gulf, the work we've done to become safer, and the trust we've earned back around the world."
