‘Thirteen Lives’ review: Ho-hum Thai cave rescue film needs a hero

Ron Howard is just not almost as competent because the courageous British divers who rescued 12 children and their soccer coach from a Thailand collapse 2018.

These sturdy souls deftly swam for hours via lengthy stretches of rocky, slim, treacherous tunnels with relative ease — and have become world heroes within the course of.

In making an attempt to dramatize their harrowing story within the movie “13 Lives,” in theaters on July 29 and on Amazon Prime Aug. 5, the director doesn’t make fast, from-the-gut selections the way in which that the intrepid group did. As a substitute, he takes a chill experience on the Lazy River.

His film craves an enlightening creative perspective, as a result of viewers have already watched an excellent, easy Nationwide Geographic documentary in regards to the operation — “The Rescue” on Disney+ — and a restricted collection known as “Thai Cave Rescue” is coming to Netflix in September. 

Nothing makes Howard’s take any extra particular than these docs, largely as a result of he can not determine who or what his movie is about. 

First, there’s the title: “13 Lives.” These two phrases sandwiched collectively would indicate that we be taught one thing — something! — in regards to the 13 fun-loving younger soccer gamers who determine to enterprise right into a cave to rejoice their pal’s birthday solely to get caught attributable to heavy rains throughout monsoon season. However we don’t. Not a single element is uttered about them besides a few of their names.

How bonkers it’s to witness a movie about saving a dozen cute children (of their transient moments on-screen, the actors are swell) that doesn’t benefit from the primordial drama of younger folks in peril.

We expect we lastly have some primary characters to information us via the murk when John Volanthen (Colin Farrell) and Rick Stanton (Viggo Mortensen) are known as in from England to help the out-of-their-league Thai Navy SEALs. The pair are volunteer cave divers — one is a retired firefighter and the opposite works in IT — who’re one of the best within the enterprise. 

But all of the film tells us about them past the vaguest of dossiers is that they’re shy and humble, and John has a younger son again house whom the misplaced boys remind him of. 

Farrell and Mortensen are finally joined by Joel Edgerton as an aquatic physician. All are completely satisfactory. Bland even. The fabric is just too shallow to make anyone memorable.

The fleeting grownup Thai characters are painted in even broader strokes: a governor who’s about to go away his job, the involved mom of a lacking boy, a Bangkok man who realizes aboveground streams are exacerbating the issue and some different divers.

Howard’s movie is at its finest in the course of the harmful swims, as we watch the expert rescuers problem-solve and give you progressive options to the unimaginable. However as soon as we see them make the journey a handful of occasions, the overlong movie settles right into a a lot too snug groove. 

“13 Lives” is just not a humiliation on the extent of a few of Howard’s current paychecks, resembling “Hillbilly Elegy” and “Inferno.” On the screening I used to be at, I overheard a person say that the director did effectively by capturing the state of affairs’s claustrophobia. Contemplating it’s a narrative about scuba diving in a subterranean cave, one would hope so!

And despite the fact that it’s primarily based on a serious, current worldwide information story, there are compelling scenes the place we briefly overlook in regards to the well-known consequence of the saga and imagine that some underwater maneuver may go incorrect or, in some unhappy situations, go proper. Not as straightforward because it appears to be like.

It’s throughout these tense, taut, well-paced sequences after we miss peak-Howard, who directed “Apollo 13” and “A Lovely Thoughts” — not “Solo: A Star Wars Story.”