The Rescue 2021
I remember the whole world being concerned about 12 kids trapped in a Thai cave in June and July of 2018. In 2021, National Geographic produced a documentary about the rescue that showed in theaters and is now on Disney Plus. The movie gets very good reviews and the story was special to me since I lived in Thailand for a couple of years. Having lived there, the movie was more interesting, hearing the language and some of the cultural things. Especially at the beginning there are a lot of interviews with Thais which are subtitled. In fact, it feels a lot like a Thai documentary translated to English. However, the movie eventually focuses mostly on a small group of mostly British cave divers who mostly carried out the rescue, albeit with a huge support team of hundreds or thousands of people on the site. The kids who were rescued (as well as their adult assistant soccer coach who went with them) sold their film rights, so none of them were allowed to be interviewed for this movie, which is a big obstacle. Also some things aren’t entirely explained, which I will put in the spoilers despite most everyone knowing the outcome of the story.
The movie is a great chance to learn more about the rescue especially since many of the details at the time were not clear. They don’t dwell on the emotional side of the story, which works out better if you just want to know what happened. They touch on some aspects other than the divers, but also go deep enough with the divers to explain why cave diving hobbyists were better suited for this than military divers. When reviewing a movie like this it is easy to be so impressed with the story that you are also impressed with the movie, so I will try to keep those separate. The movie does talk to many of the key players explaining the dangers and the monumental effort that went into the rescue. I kind of prefer Frontline style narrative in documentaries instead of just telling the story through news footage and interviews like they do here, which is overly constraining. But there are some good visuals, including 3D maps of the cave system and most of the diving footage, including showing the unsconscious boys being moved, is probably re-enactments, which aren’t noted as such. Add in some of the missing information that would have been easy to include, and yes, there are some flaws. However, it still really works and it certainly tells the story better than a dramatized movie could.
Written: 09 Mar 2022