The characters in “The Burning Sea” are the standard stock and trade of disaster movies.

| Original Score: C+ | Jan 1, 2025

A regular beat of tension and release plays out as people get saved only to face new dangers, following the template of disaster films since the beginning of cinema, but it’s done well here.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 24, 2022

It's really well done... All those special effects are used in the correct way.

| Mar 12, 2022

[It takes] the time to develop each character and the special effects don’t bludgeon you over the head.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 1, 2022

By keeping things small in scope as far as the human angle is concerned, the filmmakers do a splendid job of making this crisis personal.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 28, 2022

The Burning Sea may be gloomier and more character-driven than American genre nuts may be used to, but its still generic and therefore familiar enough to be satisfying.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 25, 2022

“The Burning Sea” is a blunt reminder of two intertwined truths: Human-made environmental catastrophes are inevitable, and it’s hard to turn them into decent action movies.

| Feb 25, 2022

We get little more than a bland romance, smoothly professional special effects and a story that’s finally too predictable to raise the heart rate.

| Feb 24, 2022

At this point the world needs a movie that documents the sins of the fossil-fuel industry more than it needs a thriller that plays off its unhappy accidents.

| Feb 23, 2022

The film drops any interest in the blurring of fact and fiction as it settles into a rote account of a contemporary oil rig catastrophe.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 22, 2022