Cave Rescue

The last count is FOUR. Four movies about the same subject released close together. And this one is even worse than the Ron Howard movie. Better watch the one and only truly riveting version and that is the documentary from National Geographic called "The Rescue". All these other movies just do not do real justice to this real life drama.

Mind you, this is not a bad movie, not at all, but why watch something inferior when a much better version is readily available?

I am gracious of the director putting the case into the movie. I know it from news, but never know the details. It is like seeing a very long news report. Since the incident is happened not for long, I am very interested to see the details.

The movie is full of negative comments. Yes, all the comments are true. But i like to point out is that timing is very important. If a very good movie is put on the screen ten years later I would lose my interest no matter what.

For the present movie I am simply urged to finish it, despite its technical drawbacks. And it is so happy to know some actors is the actual person in the incident.

In all, the movie is ok to me, and I hope more of this movie, like one on COVID 19, could be put on big screen timely.

Twelve young boys and their coach being trapped in a cave - it was world news for about 3 weeks. When the movie comes you expect to get something more out of it than an overview of the news headlines and a presentation of facts you already know. I would have expect some more insight of what the impact was on the team, but the boys themselves get no more than 10 minutes or so screening time. What is it like to find out that you are trapped in a cave. How do you deal with the darkness, dampness, lack of food, fresh water and sanitary facilities? How do you cope with being cut off from the outside world not knowing what efforts are being made there and how long it will take before someone finds you? This film makes you none the wiser. Instead the focus is on some guy arranging pumps, and else I could hardly make out a story line. On top of this the cinematography is exhausting. Hand held camera most of the time in very close up producing images on the big screen that are constantly moving are no pleasure to watch. This film adds nothing to anything and is a waste of time. My four stars are on the generous side.

We need to separate out the amazing story that was the rescue of the football team, from this awful movie.

There are many lessons to be learned from this dreadful project - first to market is not always a good thing. Getting real life participants to recreate their parts often doesn't work - and ends up in repeated scenes where they just grunt. Employing low cost actors (perhaps to make them look like real people) doesn't work well either. Focussing on little bits of story that haven't had much coverage (water pumps man) just gets tedious. Repeated scenes of people cheering and congratulating each other gets really tedious. Repeated shots of murky diving gets exceedingly tedious.

Wait for a better movie version of this story, save your time and money, and avoid this film.

Low budget production of the Thai cave rescue, The Ron Howard movie much better but the numerous documentaries out are actually better than the movie version.