THE BURNING SEA / NORDSJØEN (2021)

Crackerjack thriller from Norway (dir. John Andreas Andersen) on the rescue of a single man left behind on a half-sunk North Sea oil platform, is dramatically structured like a ‘70s disaster pic, with the third act concentrated down to an intimate three-hander.  A larger-scaled prologue sees a different platform go down while land-based technicians use unmanned underwater mobile cameras to assess damage, count bodies and watch in horror on monitors as a lone survivor, trapped in an air pocket, plays out his final moments.  The disaster a mere taste of a future where the land mass underneath hundreds of derricks & platforms is destabilizing.  Mass evacuation and remote shutdown the only answer to prevent total destruction of coastal land & sea.  But one valve needs a manual shut off or it could explode and trigger the rest to blow.  One man left behind getting it done, doomed if not for his stubborn technician girlfriend (she’d seen the man in the prologue die) who breaks orders on a personal mission to save him from the only solution available to save things: setting the floating crude oil spilling onto the ocean ablaze.  Dog-eared tropes to be sure.  Naturally there’s a single-parent tyke involved, that stubborn savior was about to move in with them, and there’s even a relative to play martyr.  But when done in exemplary fashion, excellent acting and no more CGI than necessary, it works just fine.  Especially with a government official as villain even though he’s just balancing the lives & livelihoods of millions, along with industry & coastal waters, against one man.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  You might not imagine a late ‘50s Japanese horror pic as Double-Bill fare, but a real classic, THE H-MAN/’58, showed the way with a climax that sets fire to oil on a river.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-h-man-bijo-to-ekitai-ningen-1958.html