The Rescue

I HAVE NEVER CLAPPED AT THE END OF A MOVIE BEFORE. ESPECIALLY AT HOME BY MYSELF. BUT HERE I WAS. WITH TEARS STREAMING DOWN MY FACE AND QUIETLY CLAPPING AT THE MIRCLE I JUST WITNESSED.

"The Rescue" is about the rescuers and the peculiar mentality of the dedicated cave diver. It also provides an expert, 3D-graphics-enhanced procedural recreation of the whole painstaking, perilous extraction process. The mechanics of the operation boggle the mind, and in presenting them so elegantly. Just amazing that despite all the differences in nationalities, training (Thai Navy Seals) culture and languages, a group of non-professional cave divers succeeded in the rescue of the 12 boys (age 11 to 16) and their football coach. Astonishing story and better than most Christmas movies nowadays. This is an unbelievable story that must been seen! It is better than most of the movies hitting the theatre now.

The world was captivated in 2018 when a youth soccer team got trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand. This Documentary by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (who won an Oscar for FREE SOLO) follows the rescue mission that was a collaboration of the Thai Naval Seal Team, divers from the U. S. Military, Australia and China (who, for some reason are given particularly short shrift) and other freelance divers from around the world. But, it was a squad of British civilians led by Rick Stanton and John Volanthen who took center stage because of their unique qualifications in such situations.

Vasarhelyi and Chin were somewhat hamstrung in making the Doc for several reasons including the fact that Netflix has locked up the movie rights to the soccer team and their families and couldn't be interviewed (old news footage is used to get some of their side of the story; recreations are also used where no footage is available). The filmmakers made the decision to focus on the rescue personnel - it really should be called "The Rescuers".

Even with these constraints - and the fact that everybody knows how it turns out - THE RESCUE manages to be genuinely suspenseful and moving.

The Rescue is probably one of the very best documentaries of 2021, and tells the very suspenseful story about the rescue efforts in saving a soccer team of teenage boys from an underwater cave in Thailand back in 2018.

Faults here are minimal. I think it drags a tiny bit in a few small spots in the first half, and the lack of footage sometimes leads to instances where you can tell footage is getting reused because they just didn't have any images of an integral event.

But for the most part the set up is very good, and the second half of the documentary is where it really shines, as the rescue plans and the carrying out of those plans are expertly recounted for maximum dramatic effect, and many of the interviewees are genuinely interesting and engaging people in their own right.

Was a big fan of this directing duo's last documentary too, Free Solo. That one might have had the more spectacular footage, but this one tells a more powerful and emotional story. Both are among the best documentaries of the past few years.

An amazing story of perseverance and triumph, it hit me on a level I didn't expect - after all the ugliness we've seen in the world with Covid, it restored my faith in humanity. Just go see it.