Thai Cave Rescue

Nearly gave up halfway through the first episode but I'm so glad I kept watching. This series is brilliantly done and I found it absolutely gripping. A few cheesey actors but that's few and far between, overall it was a brilliant watch. Those saying that it was too Americanised - I have to disagree. The US played their role and I felt that the series depicted it well. I was most pleased that Dr Richard Harris got all of the attention that he deserves, he's the biggest badass we in Australia have to offer. A great watch, definitely with subtitles and not dubbed as this makes the whole thing just feel far more authentic. It's half in English anyway so there's a good mix between languages. Highly recommend.

The story delivered so many lessons, a truly inspiring and heartfelt story. Those six episodes are very compelling and wonderful to watch. This Thai-language series has a strapping seriousness of its production, consisting of different foreign cast that makes the show more captivating.

"Thai Cave Rescue" is undoubtedly makes an effort to present itself as a global production that is open to a broad audience. The limited series is set up so that the situation is established fairly quickly and the remaining episodes can then focus on the issues surrounding the rescue.

You must have also time to watch this.

As a show, I'd give it an 8, but I watched "The Rescue" on NatGeo before this and that is a documentary of what happened, told mostly from the perspective of the cave divers who did the actual rescue. Because I know what I know, I had to knock this one down. Some say we finally get to see from the kids' and coach perspective (and in other versions of this story, we legally could not as one of the parents started a trust fund to protect the kids from Hollywood vultures), but considering the inaccuracies, I don't know that we really do. **UPDATE** after watching this one, i watched "The Trapped 13" which is also on NetFlix. It is a documentary that includes the kids and the coach and others.***

You'd expect some dramatization and changing of facts, but some of this changes the story tooo much, especially when I read that Jon Chu wanted to "tell the real story" of what happened. Most notably, the cave divers "accidentally" found and rescued 4 stranded pump workers nobody knew were in the caves before finding the kids. When those 4 grown men panicked and flailed and made it difficult to be saved in a shorter stretch of a swim, it had a huge influence decision on why the main/first cave diver thought they might have to sedate the kids. And in the last id that got rescued, the merged 3 different events to make it more dramatic and changed some things around.

I also thought they did a bad job of representing the first/main/lead cave diver and made him more arrogant than he actually is. In fact, I'd say it would be better represented if they swapped both the actors and the demeanors of the guy who played the first cave diver and the guy who mapped a lot of those caves.

And RIP to those who lost their lives. Thai Navy SEAL Saman Gunan died in the rescue attempt after coming out of retirement to help. And lesser known is Beirut Pakbara who died a year and a half after the rescue, due to an infection he got in the caves. There were 5000+ heroes who helped in the rescue and you men also gave all you had. And also RIP to "Beam" Papangkorn Lerkchaleampote who died 6 months before the series got released.

THINGS I LIKED: I've now seen all 4 of the film versions of this story because I wanted to evaluate and compare them for my movie review channel on YouTube. I thought I'd be bored watching this because I had already seen the other movies. I was completely wrong! This series shared much more information that the other films didn't. It introduces you to more people who had a huge impact on the success of the rescue, as well as shows you all of the other methods that were tried and failed, making you understand how crucial it was that the final attempt worked.

Even though I already knew the story and what was going to happen, I got teary-eyed quite a few times.

We get to learn a lot more about the boys, their families, and what they were experiencing.

We understand better why the coach knew how to meditate and why he felt inspired to teach the boys how to do it in order to remain calm and use less oxygen in the cave.

We see relationships being built by everyone involved in the story and the sacrifices that were made in the community.

We feel the complex emotions of the parents and the legal permissions that were requested of them.

We get to travel to Thailand and experience its beautiful country and people. I was touched by their humble homes and big hearts.

It's important for American audiences to see that not all heroes were from the USA.

THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE: If you don't want to invest 6 hours of your life in watching this story, I highly recommend you watch the Ron Howard movie 13 Lives. It offers a condensed telling in the style of big Hollywood blockbusters.

Not all of the acting is perfect but it sure was heartfelt.

The English dubbing is pretty bad.

If you watch English captions AND listen to the dubbing, you'll be frustrated by how different the translations are.

TIPS FOR PARENTS: People are in perilous situations.

Some kids show disrespect.

Spoiler: someone dies.

Talk of drowning and death.

Lazy employees are illustrated.

THEMES: Hope Family Unity Hard work Thinking outside the box The value of human life Mother Nature Heroism Miracles The power of medicine.

I watched this and Thirteen Lives one after the other. They are same and yet different. Thirteen Lives' POV is outside. They follow more the rescuers mainly the scuba divers. It's more cinematic, clean but chaotic, sensational, and technical. Thai Cave Rescue's POV is private. They follow the kids, the coach, the families, the government more thus it feels raw, rough, murky, and emotional. Also one is a 2 hr other 6 hr, so fast paced vs a slow burn. Both are good either way.

They both delivered the story well, it's just a matter of perspective. I will not comment on which is more authentic as these are dramatizations. There will always be some embellishments unlike straight documentaries. If you're mainly curious on how the rescue went on then Thirteen Lives is more than enough.

But for me I prefer to see the backgrounds. For me it adds to the emotions, the humanity, not just for the entertainment factor in order to watch a marvel of a story. I appreciate watching what was the day to day activities of those who lived through the horror before they actually went through it. I also like giving focus on what the families were feeling. Like the episode that focused on Saman Kunan was a wonderful yet somber salute to him.

One other thing I prefer Thai Cave Rescue did over Thirteen Lives was the overall feel. Thirteen Lives as I mentioned was cinematic, it was better acted, you can see everything and have good different angles of clean view thus it gives a good watch but in Thai Cave Rescue it was gray and murky underwater while the outside is drenched in rain like 90% of the time. I could actually feel the heaviness and gravity of it so to me that felt more real even when paired with not so great acting.