I was initially planning to just skip this one entirely. After how badly Hillbilly Elegy turned out, I didn’t want to run the risk of Ron Howard screwing the pooch on a story that is far more important than the humble brag come-up of a venture capitalist. I even raised this same issue with fellow critic and top bloke Travis Johnson over at Celluloid & Whiskey, who understood my apprehension but suggested I still check it out. I’ve been to many a screening with this guy, and he knows his shit, so I figured it was worth giving a burl. And man, am I glad I did, because this is some of Howard’s best narrative work in ages.
For a start, the way the story of Tham Luang cave rescue is framed did a lot to ease my initial worries going into it. Usually, these kinds of based-on-actual-events productions would isolate and highlight the more heroic characters by casting A-list actors (or at the least as close to A-list as said production can afford) in their roles. Not so much the case here. While there are bigger names in the cast list here, the film is predominantly focused on the locals over the visitors. The titular Lives trapped in the Tham Luang cave, their families nearby, the Thai Navy SEALs and political officials, along with the local culture like a ceremony led by a local kruba (monk); it’s a Hollywood production that doesn’t make the mistake of emphasising its own ‘importance’ over that of the people most affected by the events being dramatised.
Don’t get me wrong, though; the name-brand actors here do a damn good job. Viggo Mortensen as Richard Stanton brings a worried but grounded perspective to the mission at hand, showing clarity about how badly things can go without it feeling needlessly pessimistic, while Colin Farrell (rounding off quite possibly his best year ever, between this, The Batman, After Yang, and The Banshees Of Inisherin) balances him out with a more hopeful and paternal take on the matter as John Volanthen. Seeing them argue over a packet of custard cream biscuits did a surprising amount to humanise the story early on. And then there’s Joel Edgerton as Richard Harris, who arguably has an even murkier disposition than Mortensen based on what he is tasked to do in-story, but his reliability as an actor helps him sail through it.
Over the course of this over-two-hour feature, the mood created feels reminiscent of Clint Eastwood’s Sully, specifically the climactic scene involving the plane evacuation… only that feeling is sustained throughout the entire film here. It carries the same emphasis on the collective effort over spotlighting any one person as being the most vital part of the operation, and the emotional connection made by that is quite palpable. It comes across as ‘life by a thousand stitches’, as each incremental piece of good news from the boys’ discovery, to that news reaching their families on the outside, to coming up with a plan to get them out, to executing it, build on each other to invoke a feeling of hope and community. And all without undercutting the tension of the story itself as, even for a story that most of the world knows the outcome of, it makes for highly anxious material at times.
While there’s an argument to be made that what is presented here doesn’t surpass material the documentary The Rescue in terms of depicting the event, credit is absolutely due for how Ron Howard and writer William Nicholson handle the story. In sharp contrast to how Hillbilly Elegy was done, there’s no feelings of media smugness here, focusing strictly on the rescue as a moment when the world came together to do good, rather than insisting on any one person deserving more credit than the others.
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