Film Review – Thirteen Lives

“Thirteen Lives” is a dramatization of the Tham Luang cave rescue, where 12 Thai boys and their soccer coach were trapped inside a cave for 18 days, inspiring an operation to retrieve them that required precise physicality and an untested medical leap of faith. The story was also explored in the 2021 documentary, “The Rescue,” but now director Ron Howard gets his shot with the tale, which plays to his career interests in the procedural workings of an unthinkable situation and his love of hope. “Thirteen Lives” doesn’t have a fresh perspective on the event, but Howard does provide a solid you-are-there approach, getting to understand the details of the rescue, the divers in charge of pulling off a perilous journey into the cave, and the team on the other side, who have no concept of the major effort in place to make sure they come out alive. Howard aims for a cinematic understanding of risk, and he achieves it with this mostly riveting feature. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com