Film Review: Ron Howard’s Thai Cave Rescue Drama ‘Thirteen Lives’

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The only real problem with Thirteen Lives, an engrossing account of the rescue of 12 Thai boys and their coach from desperate straits when they become stranded in perilous caves during a monsoon, is that the same story was just recounted in the documentary The Rescue last fall.

Yes, of course, big-budget feature films starring known actors can draw a lot more customers than do docs. But the fact that Ron Howard’s sometimes stirring new drama will only be in theaters for a week before it starts streaming August 5 will vastly diminish the number of people who might otherwise have experienced this stirring tale on the big screen, where it was clearly designed by Howard and his colleagues to be seen.

Too bad, because it’s a fulsome film, both emotionally and as a production.Telluride Review: ‘The Rescue’The Rescue was a very high-profile documentary, and deservedly so, as it caught both the vast challenges faced by the gritty rescue team and the personalities of the low-key macho, middle-aged, mostly British specialist group that set out to do what few, if any, others would have had a clue as to how to save the kids; the group was trapped for two weeks in an all but unreachable corner of the labyrinthian cave in the far north of Thailand.One might say that this true-life thriller would be a virtual can’t-miss proposition, given its suspense and humanistic elements.

To be sure, the film is highly claustrophobic, dominated by numerous undifferentiated participants and capped by a well-known happy ending, but the lure of creeping suspense and the vivid account of what the rescue involved mostly carries the day.The monsoons came early in 2016, but there were nonetheless no warnings about how rapidly the cave would fill with