Mark Reviews Movies: THE RESCUE (2021)

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | October 7, 2021

A lot has happened in the three years since a youth soccer team became trapped in a flooded cave in northern Thailand, so one could be forgiven for forgetting the specifics of the search and rescue operations that unfolded for 18 days, involved people from around the world, and became international news. The success of Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi's documentary The Rescue is how it puts us right back into the mindset of uncertainty and anxiety of June and July of 2018, when no one knew if those kids were alive—or, if they were, how in the hell there would be any chance of getting them out of that cave.

The key to that success, which is significant, is how the filmmakers put us right there, outside and inside the Tham Luang Nang Non cave, by way of archival news footage, video captured by participants on the scene, post-rescue interviews, a detailed computer-generated map of the winding cave system, and re-creations. Those re-creations alone are so convincing that one might catch oneself starting to ask when, how, and why the rescue team set up all of those cameras, in the midst of such a life-or-death operation.

They didn't, couldn't have, and wouldn't have, obviously, but that logic is the only thing preventing us from thinking that the dramatizations here could and might be the real deal. They are, truly, that effective.

The re-creations are only part of this film, though, and they're only as good as they are because the rest of the documentary surrounding them is just as convincing. The primary focus is upon a pair of British cave divers from the United Kingdom. They're John Volanthen and Richard Stanton. Both are civilians, at the time unaffiliated with any military or government rescue group, and hobbyists in the field of caving. Volanthen works in information technology, of all things, although he does volunteer rescue work, and at least Stanton is a retired firefighter.

One of the stranger and, ultimately, more touching aspects of this story is how Volanthen, Stanton, Vern Unsworth (a fellow Brit, living in the province where the cave is located, and cave diver, who thought to call up the other two), and a larger team of Thai, European, American, Australian, and Chinese divers all seem to share the same basic history and personality. All of the ones whom the filmmakers speak with were outsiders and/or bullied as kids, and they arrived at caving for sport as a way to be isolated from others and, ironically, to keep those feelings of being alone at bay.

By the end of this operation, of course, they're all working together, helping people whom they've never met and likely never would have met under any other circumstances, and finding such a broad sense of togetherness that it's more akin to discovering the shared sense of humanity. Recalling the most important part of the rescue mission, Stanton, who doesn't have children and says he has kind of intentionally charted the course of his life to prevent that, remembers how he thought of one boy, his complete responsibility at the moment, as his child.

Chin and Vasarhelyi (a husband-and-wife team, by the way) gradually lead us into the search and, later, rescue efforts. First, we learn of the soccer team—12 players, aged between 11 and 16, and their 25-year-old coach—and how they went to cave after a practice for the occasion of one boy's birthday. It started to rain and didn't stop for some time, as the monsoon season started early that particular year. Parents realized their sons hadn't returned home, and upon looking at the entrance of the cave, some found the kids' bicycles.

We meet Unsworth, Volanthen, and Stanton, who tell us a bit about their lives and their passion for cave diving, and then, Unsworth makes the phone calls to the other two. Knowing the search could take days and that they won't be paid for it, Volanthen and Stanton fly to Thailand. Almost immediately, with the amount of flooding and the continuation of the rain and the sheer scope of the cave system, the two men become convinced that the likelihood of this being more than a recovery mission—if even that—is slim and disappearing with almost every hour.

The rest of the film is devoted to the mission, which begins as a search and later, after the British divers somehow find the team alive and relatively healthy about two and a half miles from the cave entrance, becomes a rescue. The filmmakers provide a pretty thorough description, visualization, and/or demonstration of the entirety of the process, which definitely had no clear components—only the single objective of saving the lives of those 13 people. It's rather startling just how many obstacles were in the way, as well as how much of the actual planning was basically in-the-moment improvisation.

Beyond the volunteer cavers, no one—not even the Thai Navy SEALS or any other foreign military or police personnel—possessed the specific skills or equipment to do this kind of diving. No matter how much water was pumped out of and dammed from entering the cave, the water levels inside kept rising.

Upon discovering and saving four stranded utility workers (whose survival is just one of many seemingly miraculous events here, because no one knew they were missing), the team realizes that, if grown men panic and almost drown after being submerged in the darkness for less than a minute, it'll only be worse for the kids, who would have to be submerged for multiple hours. Trying to get these boys out of the cave might end up killing them.

Even though the outcome and process of the rescue are matters of history, the rest of this procedure will remain unstated here. Even if one remembers how the divers determined to get the soccer team out of the cave, it's almost a certainty that the random inspiration for the plan, the number of second-to-second challenges, the rescuers' constant doubts, and/or more or all of these things will remain or become a shock. The Rescue puts us right in these moments, and it's a harrowing—if ultimately, on a human and humanitarian level, encouraging—experience.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products