Cave Rescue

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.

The first half of the film didn't really connect with me. I thought it was not gripping enough to be a film, and not informative enough to be a documentary. The second half managed to turn the tide, and of course the ending got me in tears. I applaud everyone involved in the rescue. I was also impressed that so many people played themselves in the film. Wow. I would have liked to see more on how the boys stayed alive in the cave, but I guess there was not enough time to tell so much story.

While the real life story of the Thai boys football teams rescue was wonderful, this film was an extremely poor production. The real people playing themselves is comical at times, through no real fault of their own. Afterall they arent actors. Its very poorly laid out and extremely slow.

This film focuses on the rescuers, in particular one of the International divers, an Irishman. But it also makes time for the local heroes of this story - the farmers whose livelihoods were threatened by the rescue efforts, the people providing food for the rescuers and, in a near film-stealing turn, a local drainage expert. Using the real people rather than actors in some instances does mean their performances seem a little stilted, but the trade-off is that as you warm to them you know you're warming to the real people (and you really do warm to them). The film also does a very effective job of conveying the chaos as multiple agencies, nationalities, languages and skill-sets try to coordinate a massive operation under incredible time pressure, as the waters are predicted to rise still further and make any rescue impossible. It's a real feat to convey all the logistics of the events while still foregrounding the human element. By the end if you're not wiping away a tear then there's something wrong with you.

Saw this at Bangkok Screening Room, February 2020. It was really not so good. Uneven pacing, poor cinematography (especially in the cave), zero character development resulting in no emotional investment from the viewer. The boys and the coach are one-dimensional stick figures with practically no dialogue. The cast was a mix of professional actors and actual people who were on the scene of the event playing themselves, which sounds all right in theory but resulted in some laughably bad acting. Real actors should have been used for the entire film. The film was produced in a short time frame immediately after the events actually took place, which might explain some of the bad choices made during production and make them almost forgivable, and the set design and production looked realistic enough-I think it was filmed on-site-so I give the film 3 stars for effort. But don't waste your time. Just watch some clips of the real thing from YouTube.

I didn't follow the news of this when it happened so do not really know how accurate it is. But as a movie it was enjoyable. I used to cave dive and could not fault the technical stuff. It was a bit of a shock that they drugged the children to get them out.