The story that gripped the world in 2018.
It’s hard to believe that it’s just four short years ago that this staggering story captured the world’s imagination, worry, despair and prayers as twelve teenage junior footballers and their coach were trapped inside the Tham Luang Cave in Thailand amid the rising water of the incessant rain that flooded large sections of the cave. Four years! From horrific and hellish headlines to Hollywood box office, and this film, expertly helmed by Ron Howard, is indeed box office. Spoilers aside as per normal, this cinematic re-creation of a heartrending story and “Based on Actual Events” written by William Nicholson and Don MacPherson, is predominantly in the original Thai language and this is only broken by the introduction of the “Western” volunteer crew who plan and attempt a near impossible rescue, and English is only ever sporadically employed from thereon in. As the rain falls, day after day, and with hope slowly being replaced by a world’s media eager for a story, cue our rescue crew with varying degrees of appalling English accents!
The accents are dreadful! But the performances are certainly not, with both Mortensen and Farrell as excellent as you’d expect and, without knowing anything about the real life human characters they inhabit here, Mortensen inhabits his character with a mischievousness that soon turns to deadpan realism and “I have zero interest in dying” and similarly so Farrell who has a more warmly shown human heart yet is as similarly deadpan and pragmatic as his great friend. Tom Bateman provides support as diver “Chris Jewell” but it’s his colleague “Harry Harris” in the guise of Australian actor Joel Edgerton who has a far more prominent and important role in the film as well as the real life drama (omitted for spoiler reasons) as well as the real human heartbeat of the rescue efforts with his cheeky and avuncular Australian nature.
From the excitement of football practice in a multitude of European team kits to the parking of their bicycles amid laughter and excitement at the entrance to the caves, and all the way through to the film’s concluding slide and confirmation that over 5,000 people from 17 countries actively participated in this otherworldly rescue, Thirteen Lives is a masterly effort from director Ron Howard. Day after day as the rain falls, Howard cleverly demonstrates repeatedly on screen how far, long, deep, exhausting and incredibly intricate the rescue attempt will be. The now flooded caves are dark, dangerous and incredibly tight, with slow progress even to make “Chamber 3” which is only 800 metres from the entrance to the caves. The mere mention of a “T Junction” is a further 600 metres and four total hours of diving away, let alone “Chamber 9”, 2,500 metres and 6 hours and 12 minutes total diving which thankfully is where the thirteen lives are. Alive. Cold. Hungry. Desperate, but with an unshakeable belief in God, their religion, and a central theme of the film as a whole.
With the thirteen human lives found, the rescue effort has barely begun and we haven’t acknowledged the treacherous and seemingly impassable “Stalactite Tunnel” five long hours of diving away.
I enjoyed this film immensely and recommend it to you based upon the director’s skills (Backdraft, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind) and his supporting team who recreated and produced the dark, dank, foreboding caves so well, keeping the heart at the centre of the story rather than the headlines, the Thai language and traditions too, as well as the on screen details that as day after day of rain passes, the prospect of a miracle looks less and less likely.
Postscript
I originally watched this film and compiled this brief review on Sunday 21st August and then watched the National Geographic documentary on the rescue a few days later wherein the dive times differ somewhat from those used on the on screen displays within the film. Or I may have mis-read and mistakenly noted the total time taken to navigate the entirety of the rescue dive(s)?
Regardless, I highly recommend both the documentary and this film.
Thanks for reading. For more talking “around” films, personal reactions and spoiler free appreciations, please see my bulging archives or the three most recently published articles linked below:
“Brian and Charles” (2022)
Ex Machina in the Welsh Hillsmedium.com
Is “The Prestige” Christopher Nolan’s unloved masterpiece?
For it is a masterpiece and here’s why.medium.com
“Nope” (2022)
Twisted Spaghetti Western. With added Aliens.medium.com