Thirteen Lives

Factual, incisive and free from cheap pathos in the tense moments. Ron Howard looks at the event through an almost documentary form. You have a bunch of guys, specialist divers, who just do their job as best they can and you won't hear any affective shouting or see them grabbing their heads and shedding crocodile tears. I guess that's how real pros behave, and I like this filmmaker's non-Hollywood approach. Moreover, the film looks beautiful, with the camera playing with all the colours, the believable Thai realities, the ubiquitous rain and mud, the hundreds of tents, the people around the scene and the locals actually speaking Thai. The cave scenes will make claustrophobics wet themselves at night for six months after watching it, you won't be able to tell what is a studio, a substitute and what is a real cave, simply excellent. And in the second half it's exciting as hell, even if you know beforehand how it's going to turn out. This should have been in the cinemas. (17/09/2022)

Last year's The Rescue is more about uncertainty, risks, unknowns, motivations and characters. This, paradoxically for a documentary, makes it work better in terms of tension and emotion than the feature film. But it’s not about which one’s better, on the contrary, both films complement each other brilliantly and it’s worth watching both, even if you already know the what and the how. Not that Howard’s film suffers from a lack of tension. The aforementioned does not mean in the least that it is not a claustrophobic blast with perfect technical aspects. Fortunately, it doesn't slip into a Hollywood fairy tale, and there would be room for it, which, considering who is behind it, is a hell of an achievement in itself. (16/08/2022)

Everest in a cave, with completely different sets and definitely not a good film for claustrophobics. Procedural, suspenseful and very authentic. It doesn't look like Howard's typical work, but Thirteen Lives contains some of his typical elements and works with them very well, without a single sign of pathos or exaggerated emotions. Nerve-wrecking and another film based on true events that Ron Howard managed well. This time much less cinematic and much more documentary-like than some of the others, but it doesn't detract from the experience. (12/08/2022)

Frost/Nixon was no accident. When the formula (not Formula) suits Howard, he is able to evoke extraordinary emotion and, in this case and by his standards, pull dry-eyed out realism out of that formula. Strangely, he doesn’t violate the real story, which was brilliantly handled in the documentary The Rescue; on the contrary, he brings his film into harmony with it by likably incorporating the metaphysics of folk superstitions and the glorification of heroes whose partial autism becomes their greatest strength at a certain point. I found the motif of loneliness and isolation to be touching. In the end, the deepest cavern is Rick Stanton, played phenomenally by Viggo Mortensen. Give that man an Oscar already! (02/01/2023)

So minimalist in its emotional filmmaking tricks, and yet so riveting and powerful! For the entire two-and-a-half-hour runtime... Ron Howard capitalizes on the seriousness of the situation and builds on the detailed perception of the psychological state of those involved. The responsibility that weighs on them to an almost unbearable extent. And the breathtaking rescue process itself. This is a very different experience from reading about it in the newspaper. Viggo Mortensen is perfect and Colin Farrell is great. There is no manipulative music, pathos or movie heroism here. Thirteen Lives is “just” a precisely filmed account of the professionally done, extremely difficult and dangerous work of a few courageous men. It is a low-key film that will only grow over time. (08/09/2022)