If you try to keep up with major news events then you will know the story that Thirteen Lives is based on. In fact, even being tangentially aware of major headlines should have you knowing enough about this before it starts to play out. This was a huge story in 2018, with many people gripped by the plight of those involved, a group of young male footballers and their coach stranded in a water-filled cave system in Thailand. You might even think that there’s no point in dramatizing there story and presenting it to people who may have those headlines still relatively fresh in their minds. I’d politely say that you would be wrong.
At approximately two and a half hours in length, this is a film that takes just the right time needed to set up the main premise, bring in the main characters (the rescue mission ended up being headed up by two British cave divers, Rick Stanton and John Volanthen), and show the many people who came together during this time. From the Navy Seals who may underestimate the conditions they need to work through to the person hoping to divert rainfall away from the openings that lead to the cave system, from the distraught parents to the farmers who agree to have their crops flooded.
Director Ron Howard, working with writer William Nicholson (a dab hand at this kind of thing, and helped with the story development by Don Macpherson), makes this an incredible viewing experience, crafting a film that presents plenty of data, context, and tension while giving equal time to the main characters. The boys needing rescued don’t have too much screentime, understandable as they simply had to wait while others struggled to figure out a workable plan, but Stanton and Volanthen go through a real variety of emotions, as do the people working with them, and the local governor who is kept in place to take the blame when the expected, “unavoidable”, deaths occur.
With Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell playing Stanton and Volanthen, respectively, and their main team being filled out by Tom Bateman, Paul Gleeson, and Joel Edgerton, it would be all too easy to make this a film about a rescue mission in Thailand that focuses purely on the white men who were brought in because of their niche expertise. So it’s a good job that Howard allows time to show the work of the local Navy Seals, and the ultimate responsibility placed on Sahajak Boonthanakit (playing Governor Narongsak). Vithaya Pansringarm is also a formidable presence, as General Anupong, and it would be remiss of me to not highlight the optimism and energy delivered by Nitipoom Khachatphai, aiming to help divert as much water away from the cave system as possible.
Everyone gives a very good performance, but hats off to both Mortensen and Farrell for also putting on decent English accents. The two men apparently took their roles very seriously, often performing their own diving for most of the shots, and they slip into their characters so well that you very easily forget that it IS actually Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell you’re watching. Bateman and Edgerton are the other actors to single out, both bringing different elements to the story, and both seeming very much out of their comfort zone in different ways.
A good documentary could give you all of the information presented here, and there is at least one good documentary already made about this incident, but a good drama can somehow deliver the same information to you in a more effective way, when it is done as well as this anyway. Distances, timings, the co-ordination between so many different groups of people, the weight of every decision, the technical details that are discussed, everything is here, and it is all improved by viewing it from “behind the scenes”, warts and all, and being reminded of the rollercoaster journey that everyone went through while the tick of the clock grew louder and louder.
Thirteen Lives is a fantastic telling of a story that deserves to be told in full. The hefty runtime flies by, and by the time it all ends you feel as if you have watched something great, but also something that succeeds in properly honoring the amazing achievements of everyone involved.
8/10
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