for the most heroic of reasons.In Ron Howard’s new movie “Thirteen Lives,” streaming on Prime Video Friday, Viggo Mortensen plays Stanton, who co-engineered the rescue of 12 Thai boys and their soccer coach from a monsoon-flooded cave.
Along with his diving partner, John Volanthen (Colin Farrell in the film), he was able to navigate the forbidding terrain and locate the boys, who were stranded more than 2 miles into the cave.With Stanton working as an adviser on the film, he said Howard’s depiction is true to life. “The underwater scenes are unbelievably realistic — other than the fact that we couldn’t actually see anything,” Stanton, now in his early 60s, told The Post by phone. “But of course, that doesn’t translate to a movie screen.” In the summer of 2018, the Tham Luang cave saga made international headlines.
The world watched for 18 tense days to see if the soccer players, who’d gone exploring in the cave and gotten trapped by a flood, would make it out.
Conditions were perilous, as the rainy season had started earlier than expected, and local military divers struck out. Stanton was on a shortlist of experienced cave rescue divers who might be able to succeed where others had failed.
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