Thirteen Lives (2022)

Highly Watchable Rescue Drama - Thirteen Lives review by GI

Director Ron Howard has the straight forward story telling ability to draw tension, stress even, from stories where the viewer already knows the outcome, Apollo 13 (1995) for example. Here he does it again with a simple story of the rescue of twelve Thai schoolboys and their football coach who become trapped in a large 'tourist' cave when monsoon rains unexpectedly arrive and cause the cave to flood. It's a story of ordinary heroism when Thai Navy SEALS assisted by cave diving experts Rick Stanton (Viggo Mortensen) and John Volanthen (Colin Farrell) at first find the boys all alive after several days of their being alone in the cave and having to navigate treacherous passages and strong floodwater currents to reach them. The expected claustrophobic scenes make for a thrilling and occasionally edge of your seat experience. But this is only the first part of the story as how to get them out becomes the major plot issue. With casualties forecast by the straight talking Stanton he comes up with the daring and highly risky plan to use Australian cave diver and qualified anaesthetist, Harry Harris (Joel Edgerton), to put the boys to sleep one by one and drag them through the long, torturous dive to get them out. Howard draws every emotion from the scenario including the plight of the smallest boy forced to be the last to make the journey as finding a facemark to fit him proves difficult. On the surface there is the political struggles of the local Governor who realises he's to be the fall guy if anything goes wrong. Howard also rightly and smartly doesn't overcook the potential 'white' saviour issue which is partly unavoidable by making sure that Mortensen, Farrell etc play their parts as unassuming as possible, they're simply experts who volunteer to help. The narrative does introduce a slight friction between the Thai SEALS and these foreigners but it's never pushed as a major plot device. Overall this is a riveting and moving story of a real event allegedly quite accurate, as a film it's definitely worth checking out.