The last hour of the film is action-packed, and when our heroes are trying to navigate the impossible conditions, the film starts to sing. 'Thirteen Lives' makes the most of this premise, and in some style.Īt 2 and a half hours, viewers would be inclined to write the film off as overlong on principle, but the film is remarkably well-paced, and the film largely earns its run time. Like 'Dunkirk', time becomes the villain of the piece, and the mad rush to rescue the team from the cave as a monsoon bears down on the region is a premise tailor-made for Hollywood. There is a relentless spectre of inevitability present in the film, and the viewer is always acutely aware that the film is a race against the clock. The unfolding drama made for gripping viewing as it unfolded across the news cycle in 2018, and one of the masterstrokes of 'Thirteen Lives' is allowing us to get into the nitty-gritty of the effort it took to get the young Thai football team and their coach out of a labyrinthine cave system. The ever-regal Viggo Mortensen also turns in a strong performance as cave diver extraordinaire Rick Stanton, and the interplay between Mortensen and Farrell is a key part of the film's success.įarrell, Mortensen and Joel Edgerton are fantastically cast, and our leading men do a great job of bringing a sense of humanity to an extraordinary story.
The secret to the success of 'Thirteen Lives' is simple it trades on the real life outcome we're familar with, and instead takes the time to flesh out the extraordinary people at the centre of this ordeal.Ĭolin Farrell has never been better in the role of English diver John Volanthen, with the Dub in top flight.įarrell happens to look identical to the real life John Volanthen, and between this and 'The Batman', Farrell has settled into a wonderful character actor era that suits him well.įarrell trades his natural movie star charisma for humility, and Farrell does a brilliant job at selling just how risky and dangerous the conditions were in the cave. 'Thirteen Lives' pulls the oldest trick in the book of mining real-life heroics for drama, and this is an exceptionally well-made portrayal of one of the most extraordinary news stories of recent times. The 'Rush' and 'Apollo 13' director is the steady hand behind the camera for this big-budget adaptation of the Thai cave rescue that gripped the world in 2018, and this telling of the story is every inch the glossy Hollywood adaptation you'd expect. Ron Howard has a reputation for taking real-life subjects like Formula One or dramatic space missions and spinning it into cinematic gold, and the Oscar winner has worked his magic again with 'Thirteen Lives'.