Movie Review: Thirteen Lives | Pittsburgh Magazine

After struggling to haul a panicked man out of a flooded cave, elite diver Richard Stanton displays on the expertise.

“That was thrilling,” he says. “Not in a great way.”

Pay attention, Richard — don’t overview the film for me, okay?

“13 Lives” is an in depth and interminable recreation of the 2018 rescue effort in Thailand’s Tham Luang cave, when divers and volunteers from world wide gathered to save lots of a wayward junior soccer workforce. By way of a painstaking and inconceivable effort, the kids and their coach have been all extracted from their lethal predicament.

Director Ron Howard is equally painstaking in depicting the affair; undoubtedly, the movie is a technical achievement. He’s so painstaking, the truth is, that the movie grows tiresome nearly instantly.

“13 Lives” is constantly tense with out ever turning into fascinating or entertaining. The challenges the rescuers confronted weren’t issues of dramatic suspense; the calls for merely have been lengthy and tedious, two phrases that don’t make for excellent cinema. There are not any actual stakes, in fact, since any viewer curious sufficient to observe the movie is probably going conversant in the incident and is aware of the children are gonna be okay.

As an alternative, false drama is created by spending an excellent hour standing round speaking about how dangerous the operation can be.

One diver did perish, in fact, a former Thai Navy SEAL named Saman Kunan (Sukollawat Kanarot). Callously, the loss of life of the one man to really lose his life within the cave is handled as an object lesson for the workforce; right here, he’s a plot flip, not an individual.

Is he even a predominant character? No, in fact not; depressingly, if not surprisingly, the white guys are the protagonists. It’s true that Stanton (Viggo Mortensen) and John Volanthen (Colin Farrell), British rescue-dive specialists, have been key to the operation and the primary to really discover the boys; with out them, the rescue seemingly would’ve failed. In making that story right into a film, nonetheless, you’re telling a narrative about how some non-white folks bought in bother, different non-white folks failed to assist and a few white folks confirmed as much as save the day.

If that’s the story you’re working with, simply don’t make the film.

My Ranking: 3/10

“13 Lives” is now enjoying in choose theaters and can stream on Prime Video starting on Aug. 5.