Thirteen Lives

Thirteen Lives, starring (L to R) Colin Farrell, Paul Gleeson and Thira Chutikul, tells the story of the astonishing rescue (Picture: AP).

‘It seemed like a long time, but it was only a matter of seconds. Each of them had a different cave and tunnel system to recreate the real-life situation. Of course, it would have been impossible to film in a real cave system, so the cave had to be replicated exactly. ‘So we had a couple of weeks where they were in the water with them every day, emulating it and for that reason, because they’ve done that work — they also volunteered to work on the weekends and whatever was required, so that all of the shots are them — they learned the cave diving techniques and the personalities of the men that they were playing.’ I panicked’ Rick Stanton, who Viggo plays in the new film and who was an essential part of the rescue mission, had a hand in teaching the actor how to cave dive for real.

For Ron Howard's retelling of the 2018 ordeal, Pattrakorn Tungsupakul not only played the mother of a stranded boy, she also made key script contributions.

“I feel proud,” said Rugeradh Tungsupakul, who goes by Waen. “I know how hard it’s been for her to get where she is today.” He died before her first television show ran and had not been happy when she abandoned law for the unpredictable life of an actress. “She introduces femininity and the soft side of energy,” Ruetaivanichkul said. Early success on a 2013 series in which she played a rural girl forced to move to Bangkok after her father is murdered made her a star in Thailand. When asked if she was famous, Tungsupakul demurred with a quiet “Yeah,” before adding, “But if I say ‘yes’ then maybe ‘Oh, I’m too much.’” The tears came so easily because the world the production team had recreated in Australia felt so close to home. She graduated from law school, but instead decided to move to Bangkok to pursue a career in acting. “She shows the empathy within the group. (The producer P.J. van Sandwijk worked on both “Thirteen Lives” and “The Rescue.”) Tungsupakul brought the idea of the bracelets to the production as another example of paying attention to the local customs. “I asked my friend who studies northern culture at Chiang Mai University, and he said this is a must-have item,” she said. Her character’s arc involves finding her voice in the quiet moments: She challenges the governor directly (“How can you understand? “Dramatically, she’s the most heartbreaking.”

Ron Howard's biographical survival film about the Tham Luang cave rescue stands out for how realistic it is and how it feels.

The criticism that I have for this story is the same that I had for the documentary, which is where is the perspective of the children? Without spoiling too much of the rescue for those who managed to dodge the news on the news as it was developing, Howard's no-frills approach to Thirteen Lives is what makes it such a success. This is barely touched on, so it's difficult for the audience to truly understand the fear that the parents had for their children who had no nationality or citizenship. On its own, the story of this rescue is inspiring, and the 18 day story kept the world at the edge of their seats. It makes a good pairing with Farrell's Volanthen who is much warmer, and as a father himself, can keenly imagine the pain that the parents of the children feel. Back in the summer of 2018, a group of kids between the ages of 11-16 decided to go into a local cave.

An exclusive look at how the heartracing film was made, from building huge tanks in a warehouse to sifting through nearly 400 hours of footage.

Then, equal time is dedicated to life just outside the cave, as the efforts of locals—from family members to government officials to spirited volunteers—prove vital in the mission’s success. An international rescue effort of more than 10,000 people resulted in every one of them being delivered to safety after over two weeks of careful, tricky planning—though not without lives lost along the way. But instead of launching into space, this time he’s diving underwater.

En 2018 en Thaïlande, une grande mission de sauvetage internationale a été organisée afin de secourir 12 jeunes joueurs de soccer, ainsi que leur entraîneur ...

La reconstitution est crédible, et l’ensemble est très correctement réalisé, mais Thirteen Lives se contente de recréer l’évènement sans chercher vraiment à explorer l’impact émotionnel qu’une telle histoire peut avoir sur des individus. Le réalisateur de Da Vinci Code, lauréat d’un Oscar grâce à A Beautiful Mind, met son expertise au service d’une histoire qui, il n’y a pas si longtemps, a attiré l’attention du monde entier. Avec de longs passages sous l’eau…

Ron Howard's take on the 2018 Thai cave rescue is very Hollywood, but it doesn't capture the tense immediacy of a documentary.

And mention must be made of composer Benjamin Wallfisch (Blade Runner 2049, It), whose score bravely underplays every emotional beat, allowing the film’s wonderfully ragged sound design to come to the fore – all that sloshing and clanking as the suited divers make their way through the dark, craggy caves. Neither of these details made in into Howard’s film. In The Rescue, we watch the actual footage shot by Stanton and Volanthen as they surfaced in the cave where the stranded boys were huddled. It’s roughly in the middle quality-wise as well. Sept. 22 sees the release of Thai Cave Rescue, a six-part Netflix docudrama. That June, 13 members of a boys’ soccer team were trapped underground when early monsoon rains flooded a cave system while they were hiking through it.

How accurate is 'Thirteen Lives,' Ron Howard's new movie about the Thai cave rescue of a boys' soccer team and their coach? We fact check the film.

And then the anesthetic was ketamine, and it was a lot. ("I reckon you did the hardest part," Harry tells him. Although Ploy's character is a composite of many parents, the bracelets themselves were real: "That was a wonderful discovery," Nicholson says. It's true that "the parents never knew," Nicholson says. Before the rescue gets underway, a trapped boy's mother (Pattrakorn "Ploy" Tungsupakul) gives Rick and John a bag of red beaded bracelets for good luck. Although it was initially just referenced in the script, Howard says he wanted "an opportunity to see this meditation."

"Thirteen Lives" on Prime Video, starring Viggo Mortensen, Colin Farrell, Joel Edgerton and Tom Bateman, will have you on the edge of your seats.

He was pronounced dead at 1 a.m. on July 6. The time took to retrieve each boy and their coach was three hours per individual. The rescue operation could have gone down very different routes. Volanthen and Stanton were overseen by BCRC diver Robert Harper and later assisted by the Thai, U.S., Australian and Chinese diving reams. The incident saw a junior football team aged 11 to 16 and their 25-year-old assistant coach, Ekkaphon Chanthawong, trapped in a cave for a total of 18 days. They weren't found until July 2 at 10 p.m., almost two weeks after they first entered the cave.

“Thirteen Lives” is a dramatization of what happened in July 2018 when 12 boys and their football coach were trapped in a flooded limestone cave in Thailand for several weeks. Like his space flick, it will take a lot of on-the-fly can-do to get them ...

“They’re packages and we’re just the delivery guys,” one rescuer says. The overall effect is a more inclusive storytelling — no white savior narrative, great — but the cost is a flattening of the narrative. Much of the film was shot in Australia, not Thailand. (That’s a spoiler if you’ve been in a literal cave for the past four years.) “Thirteen Lives” is available Friday on Prime Video. There is also some clunky dialogue and daft Hollywoodization, like the heavy use of cellos when things get dramatic and the appearance of slo-mo ambulances. Twenty-seven years ago, Ron Howard’s “Apollo 13” saluted men with the right stuff — quiet courage and grace under pressure.

Richard Stanton, one of the real-life heroes from the 2018 Thai cave rescue, talks to EW about the Hollywood version of the event, 'Thirteen Lives.'

While some of the performers already had diving experience, Stanton notes "our equipment is very unusual and esoteric — how to use that, how to handle it, or to look like you've had years experience handling it. "I was showing him my presentation of the actual rescue that I have, pictures and a presentation I put together. But more importantly, it was just sort of assimilating my character, nuances, and some of my mannerisms." "We didn't realize at that time how emotionally invested people were in the story," he says. "The biggest difference between this and the rescue is the fact that when we were underwater, you couldn't really see anything. And you really couldn't see maybe more than a foot at times, but two or three feet at the best of times.

The movie is inspired by the real-life rescue of 13 people who were trapped in a cave in Thailand. You can stream "Thirteen Lives" on Prime Video.

If you buy them, we may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our partners. You can find a list of supported devices and televisions on the Amazon website. Prime Video is also included as part of a full Amazon Prime membership for $15 a month. Twelve children and their soccer coach were trapped over two miles deep in the Tham Luang cave system in Thailand. However, that free trial period is a one-time deal, and if you don't cancel when the 30 days are up, you'll be looped into the monthly rate. You can sign up for Prime Video as a standalone streaming service for $9 a month.

Thirteen Lives stars Colin Farrell and Viggo Mortensen as two of the heroic divers. Is it accurate?

The tunnels are so murky that even with headlamps, the only way the rescue divers can find their way out and not get lost in the cave network is by keeping hold of a guide rope installed before the boys are swum out from Cavern 9. It was in fact the Thai military who called in Thanet Natisri (Nophand Boonyai), a Thai restaurant owner and self-taught groundwater storage expert from Marion, Illinois who happened to be working on a project in Thailand building wells for farmers. With the attempt to reach the boys suspended because of the constantly-rising water level, a Thai-American water engineer points out that unless the water pouring in from above is diverted, the divers will never be able to get in. In fact, hundreds of rescuers formed a ‘daisy chain’ to slide, carry, and even zipline the boys on stretchers over a complex network of pulleys previously installed by rock-climbers (also not shown). Some stretchers were placed on an impromptu slide made of hoses installed to pump out water. The two British experts were indeed the first to navigate the difficult narrow tunnels past Cavern 3 and find the boys alive in Cavern 9, and they did bring on two more British divers plus Harris. However, possibly in the name of not overwhelming the audience with more characters than they can possibly keep track of, the film has omitted from the core team another Australian and another lead diver, Jim Warny from Ireland, who joined on the final day of the rescue. They bring the “packages,” anesthetized boys in wetsuits and scuba gear on light stretchers with hands and feet restrained, to a staging area in Cavern 3, where the stretchers are guided through the rest of the network to the cave entrance by a team of Thai SEALS and divers. Also not shown are the 90 Thai divers and the foreign dive shop owners who were stationed along the route to perform medical check-ups and resupply air-tanks for the main divers, and the team who installed the oxygen tanks, cables, lighting system, communication devices, and the water drainage pipes and pumping system used to drain water from the tunnels. In the film, the mother of one of the boys tells the assistant to the area’s governor, Narongsak Osatanakorn (Sahajak Boonthanakit), that her family is from Myanmar and so don’t have any official ID cards. The film’s version of the rescue itself shows only the four British cave dive experts guiding each unconscious boy (one diver per boy) between Caverns 9 and 3 over the course of three days. The film depicts about 20 Thai Navy SEALS beginning the rescue operation, but, trained for open water diving and not work in narrow cave tunnels, they can only get about halfway down the tunnel network to Cavern 3. The confusion may arise from the fact that all four were from the ethnic minority hill tribes that populate both sides of the porous border in the notorious Golden Triangle, a hotbed of drug smuggling, between Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos, where Thai authorities estimate the “stateless” population with no documented nationality may be as high as three million. The bad news: The story was covered so exhaustively at the time that much of the core audience is already familiar with all the details and will notice any fudging for dramatic effect.

Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell play hero cave divers in this invigorating saga.

So he doesn’t. It’s all in a day’s work for the heroes of this story, and the same goes for iots director. This is Howard’s best movie since Apollo 13, and it’s an altogether different approach to similar material, a true story about gumption and intelligence in the face of adversity. A little internet reading on the guy suggests he was demoted for refusing to cooperate with corrupt officials, and although that’s not explicitly stated in the movie, Pansringarm carries significant dramatic weight here, his nonverbals showing a subtly frothy stew of worry and concern as Osatanakorn makes difficult decisions and deals with grieving parents, thirsty media throngs and intense political pressure. A small city of tents and trucks and workers and cooks and officials and locals and media has sprung up around the cave site. In other words, this saga already had earned its harrowing and suspenseful peaks and valleys, its emotional catharsis, and doesn’t need Howard to amplify it. They don their gear and scope out the cave but the rain. And so, Gov. Osatanakorn is the most subtly complex character here; those were his final days on the job, and he theorizes that his superiors pushed him to the forefront of an operation that was likely doomed to fail. Richard and John navigate the murk and dark and rocks and stalactites and narrow crevices and tricky turns and pop their heads above the water. (It’s also worth nothing that there’s another movie about these same events called The Cave, which came out in 2019.) “They’re amateurs!” declares Capt. Arnont. Sure, one is a retired firefighter and the other’s an IT guy, but their hobby gives them the know-how that SEALs lack. Amazon Prime exclusive movie Thirteen Lives further proves that no real-life saga about the triumph of human spirit and ingenuity goes un-Hollywoodized. You likely already know the story: In 2018, 12 boys and their soccer coach ventured into a cave in Thailand’s Chiang Rai Province when sudden torrential rain brought flash floods, trapping them deep underground. By midnight, the governor arrives at a bustling scene.