Thirteen Lives & Cave Rescue review

IN A NUTSHELL:

Four separate movies been released almost simultaneously about this story.  It’s a fascinating story because it’s true.  A boys’ soccer team was trapped in the Tham Luang cave by rising floodwaters in Thailand in 2018.  There’s Cave Rescue by Tom Waller and Lionsgate, Ron Howard’s Thirteen Lives on Amazon Prime, a National Geographic documentary called The Rescue that was nominated for an Oscar, and a Netflix limited series called Thai Cave Rescue.  More than 5000 people from 17 countries participated in the real-life rescue.

THINGS I LIKED:

• In all of them, we get to travel to beautiful Thailand.
• Thirteen Lives gives us time to get to know some of the rescuers a little bit better.
• It’s fun to see the food, homes, and religious culture illustrated in all of them.
• In all of the films, we get to learn and watch various rescue techniques that were used to try to save the boys.
• We get to see how the world came together to rescue the boys.
• While Thirteen Lives was a big Hollywood production with elaborate sets and soundstages, Cave Rescue was actually filmed in Thailand near the actual locations where the events occurred.  Rescue diver Jim Warny plays himself in that version.
• I adore Viggo Mortensen, so that persuaded me to favor the Thirteen Lives version by Academy Award-winning director Ron Howard.  Viggo Mortensen speaks multiple languages, and apparently, he’s also a fix-it guy, volunteering to fix equipment rather than wait for the crew.  Also in that movie are Colin Farrell and Joel Edgerton.  They all speak with accents and are absolutely fantastic.
• It’s fun to hear Thai being spoken.  We also hear Chinese and English.  In Cave Rescue, we also hear French and Spanish.
• Ron Howard’s film utilized over a thousand people to portray all of the action!
• Even though we know the outcome of the story (if you paid attention to the news when this was happening in real life), all movies do a good job of building tension and suspense.
• In both Thirteen Lives and Cave Rescue, we’re shown a map of the cave and a time counter that tells us where the divers are and how much time has passed since the rescue operations began.
• The cinematography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom in Thirteen Lives does an excellent job of making us hold our breath and gasp for air.  In reality, the water would have been extremely muddy with terrible visibility.
• Many of the actors in the movie Cave Rescue were the people in real life who experienced the ordeal.
• So much for superheroes…these rescue workers are the real deal.
• There’s a super sweet scene in Thirteen Lives that really touched me.  It’s when two of the divers first found the boys.  The first thing the boys said was “Thank you.”  They were so humble and affirmed that they loved their coach, even though he felt terrible for getting the boys into dangerous trouble.  They explained that the coach taught them how to meditate and be calm.  I just wanted to hug the boys and was so emotional watching these films!
• The boys went so long without food, which is possible, so I wondered how they were getting water.  For a split second in the movie Thirteen Lives, we see one of the young boys opening his mouth to get drips of water from the cave wall.  Wow.
• At the end of Cave Rescue, we get to see video footage of the real people who experienced the events.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:

• In both Thirteen Lives and Cave Rescue, we don’t get to see how the boys got stuck in the cave.  Instead, we see the boys wander near a cave and then, suddenly, rescue workers are seen swarming the area.  We don’t get to see how the boys survived for so long.
• In Cave Rescue, a lot more Thai is spoken, often without subtitles.  There are also a lot of title cards that you have to read that let you know what’s going on.  You have to read fast because they don’t stay on the screen very long.  I also felt like some details were missing in this version that made it harder to understand what was going on than in Thirteen Lives.

TIPS FOR PARENTS:    

• There is a lot of reading text in all four movies.
• Boys are in a dangerous situation.
• Talk of death
• Someone drowns.
• In Cave Rescue, there is an F-bomb.

THEMES:

• Humanity
• The value of life
• Teamwork
• Thinking outside the box
• Hope
• Family
• Innocence
• Mother Nature
• Heroism

You can see the full review on the Movie Review Mom YouTube channel.

tmc.io contributor: MovieReviewMom

I review movies at MovieReviewMom.com and on my Movie Review Mom YouTube channel!