Film Review: Thirteen Lives celebrates human nature at its very best
(L to R) Thira ‘Aum’ Chutikul as Commander Kiet, Popetorn ‘Two’ Soonthornyanaku as Dr Karn, Joel Edgerton as Harry Harris, Colin Farrell as John Volanthen and Viggo Mortenson as Rick Stanton in THIRTEEN LIVES, a Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures film. for caroline delaney declan burke Credit: Vince Valitutti / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures © 2022 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.
★★★★☆
Thirteen Lives (12) stars Colin Farrell as John Volanthen, an amateur cave-diver who volunteers to help locate a young football team and their coach after they get trapped by monsoon rains in a cave system in Thailand.
Faced with the almost certain prospect of the boys dying in the cave, the Thai authorities reluctantly agree to allow John and his diving colleagues Rick Stanton (Viggo Mortensen), Chris Jewell (Tom Bateman) and Jason Mallinson (Paul Gleeson) to descend into the flooded caves to try to find the boys – but it’s only when the missing boys are finally found, a week after they first disappeared, that the true enormity of the rescue mission reveals itself.
Written by William Nicholson and directed by Ron Howard, Thirteen Lives is based on the events at the Tham Luang cave system in 2018, and brilliantly conveys the impossible nature of the task facing the amateur divers, the Thai Navy Seals, and the small army of local volunteers that rallied to help.
The actual descent into the caves is the stuff of nightmares, as John & Co navigate claustrophobically narrow passages while contending with flash-floods and rockfalls caused by the early arrival of the monsoon season. It takes a strange breed to thrive in such conditions, and John, Rick, Chris and Jason are all social misfits, and wholly uninterested in playing the role of hero – indeed, Viggo Mortensen excels at this aspect of his character, with Rick dourly informing John at one point that he ‘doesn’t even like kids.’
We all know how the story ends, of course, but even so Ron Howard delivers an incredibly intense film, a gripping thriller that celebrates human nature at its very best. (Prime Video)
