Mission to hell
THIRTEEN LIVES Cert 12A
★★★★
In cinemas now, on Amazon Prime Video from Friday
Ron Howard is the director, it’s a disaster movie based on a true story and it has 13 in the title. The Oscar and Bafta omens are strong for this Amazon Prime flick. As with Apollo 13, Howard adds suspense to a familiar story with his account of the daring 2018 rescue of 12 teenage boys and their football coach from a flooded cave in northern Thailand.
There’s a documentary feel to the opening scene as we watch members of a children’s football team take a ill-fated bike ride to the Tham Luang caves. They find themselves trapped after a flash flood but the details are tastefully glossed over and the film quickly switching to frantic early attempts to rescue them.
As villagers toil on the mountainside to divert water from the cave, Thai Navy SEALs turn back midway through the vast cave system, fearing for their own safety.
In desperation, the authorities turn to amateur cave divers John Volanthen (Colin Farrell) and Richard Stanton (Viggo Mortensen) who arrive from Britain arguing over a packet of custard creams.
With the help of nifty on-screen graphics, the film reconstructs their long, arduous journey through cramped passages to reach the boys. But their parents’ celebrations worry Stanton as getting them out alive will be an almost impossible feat.
In a final throw of the dice, he brings over another diver, Australian anaesthesiologist Richard Harris ( Joel Edgerton), who is given the terrifying task of sedating each lad so their unconscious bodies can be floated through the cramped tunnels.
Howard’s well-crafted film grips but, if you want to understand the mental pressures endured by these heroes, I recommend documentary The Rescue.
It’s an equally tense but somewhat deeper account of this same quite remarkable tale.
Getting the boys out alive will be an almost impossible challenge