Thirteen Lives
147 minutes; PG-13; directed by Ron Howard
Critic’s grade: B

There are certain types of movies involving harrowing experiences, often inspired by real-life events, that tend to leave viewers practically exhausted by the time the credits roll. They’re so realistically photographed, and the stakes are so high for those involved in the nightmare, that moviegoers can’t help but feel as if they had taken an emotional, even physical journey alongside the main characters.

“The Impossible” (2012), about a British family of five who survived the Tsunami that swept them away from their resort in Thailand and into the raging waters of the Indian Ocean, was one such film. Against enormous odds, a married couple and their three kids managed to stay alive.

A decade later, here comes another survival film set in the same country (but mostly filmed in Australia). Ron Howard’s “Thirteen Lives” tells the story of the dramatic rescue of a boys soccer team trapped in an underground cave in northern Thailand, where fast-rising flood waters made escape unlikely at best and impossible at worst.

But beating the odds is the name of the game for this kind of inspirational tale, which comes with a conclusion that won’t be a surprise to anyone who followed the widely disseminated news of the 2018 incident or watched last year’s documentary “The Rescue” or 2019 docudrama “The Cave.”

Howard, who effectively ratcheted up the tension in “Apollo 13” (1995), a true story of survival in outer space, demonstrates similar skills with what might be viewed as an inner-space narrative in “Thirteen Lives.” He directed from a rather conventional screenplay credited to William Nicholson (“Les Miserables,” “Gladiator”) and Don MacPherson.

The filmmaker and Thai-born cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom set the stage for the two and one-half hour saga with scenes that are practically pastoral — boys play soccer on a green pitch with a backdrop of majestic mountains, and then they ride their bicycles, all in a line, through roads taking them past fields of crops. Locals gather at colorful food trucks, and a family rushes around getting ready to throw a birthday party for one of the boys.

It’s the calm before the literal storm: A dozen of the players, who are between the ages of 11 and 16, and their 25-year-old coach, take a quick pre-party detour to visit a local cave, unaware that a massive rainstorm, indicating an early arrival of monsoon season, is about to change their lives forever.

Once it becomes apparent that the team is trapped, the province’s governor calls in the military and its expert divers, assuring parents and the community that the crisis will be averted promptly and the boys will come home.

But days go by, prospects diminish for a safe, quick rescue, and the governor and the military have no choice but to let a team of experienced cave-rescue divers from the UK brainstorm a solution. The group, led by can-do guy John Volanthen (Colin Farrell) and the cantankerous, more pragmatic Rick Stanton (Viggo Mortensen), also includes their colleagues, Dr. Harry Harris (Joel Edgerton), young Chris Jewell (Tom Bateman) and Jason Mallinson (Paul Gleeson). Their camaraderie, bravery and mild rivalry with one another in support of an act of pure selflessness, at no small risk to themselves, are among the movie’s most affecting elements.

Howard takes a workmanlike approach to this material, handily weaving together the various strands of the all-in rescue effort, including a massive, largely successful operation to divert rainwater — which has been pouring down the mountainside — away from the cave entrance and into local fields, in the process destroying crops but perhaps helping save the boys’ lives.

High-end craftsmanship bolsters the tricky underwater sequences, as the UK and Thai divers variously engage in hours-long dives, making their way through tight tunnels and dealing with other obstacles enroute to the chamber where the boys are located. Got claustrophobia? These scenes might make you uncomfortable.

Perhaps in part due to Howard’s desire to not have the movie solely focus on Westerners arriving to save the day, the narrative feels a little disjointed, as the storytelling relies on steadily evolving points of view, with radio and TV broadcasts filling in some of the gaps. We take in the proceedings through a variety of lenses — the governor, the military, the locals engaged in diverting water, an engineering expert, the parents of the boys, and the UK team. Consequently, there’s limited character development.

“Thirteen Lives” nevertheless offers an engaging expedition to the center of a headline-grabbing crisis, an 18-day ordeal that united a village, a region, a country and, briefly, the world, in sympathy for and support of a group of boys who faced the very real risk of losing their lives.

Bonus: The film may help Howard further separate himself from the bad publicity surrounding his last film, misguided redneck drama “Hillbilly Elegy” (2020).