Thai Soccer Cave Rescue Doc Spins a Yarn So Wild It Has to

In 2018, 12 kids had been trapped in a slender, serpentine cave system within the mountains of Northern Thailand, and wouldn’t you realize it? The complete subterranean labyrinth was additionally flooding with numerous gallons of water. The authorities does every little thing of their energy to save lots of them, the Navy SEALs are enlisted with all their experience, however in the long run, there was one small group of people that saved the day:

Hobbyists.

Oscar-winning filmmakers E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (“Free Solo”) are again with a brand new documentary whose primary premise is so Hollywood-friendly that even Adam Sandler has already performed it. When aliens attacked the Earth in “Pixels,” solely a handful of middle-aged arcade sport consultants had been outfitted to save lots of the day. In “The Rescue,” solely a small group of weekend cave-divers have what it takes to save lots of a dozen kids and their soccer coach.

Vasarhelyi and Chin go to nice lengths to make clear that the success of this mission belongs to all people who participated, no matter their particular area. But “The Rescue” additionally hangs its complete narrative thread on the concept that these few males — and the esoteric part-time pursuit they love, one which no person else understands or appreciates — had been precisely what was wanted to resolve this seemingly unimaginable downside.

As such, regardless of how harrowing and borderline unbelievable the underwater cave footage is, regardless of how unimaginable the percentages or how real the interview footage appears to be, there’s a slickness to the storytelling in “The Rescue” that nearly undermines its efficacy as a documentary. All the “Save The Cat” storytelling beats have already come pre-packaged by actual life, from the environment friendly inciting incident to the mid-film revelation that adjustments the sport to the final minute “Whiff of Death” that reminds us simply how excessive the stakes are.

By the time “The Rescue” concludes with a rousing, overblown energy ballad known as “Believe,” you’d be forgiven for pondering you’d simply seen the costly blockbuster model of those occasions, tidily wrapped up in time for Oscar season.

Then once more, it’s exhausting responsible Vasarhelyi and Chin for leaning into this plucky-underdog narrative, they usually do a superb job of holding the tragedy of those misplaced kids front-and-center in “The Rescue.” More time is spent with the cave-divers than, for instance, the households of the trapped kids or the rescue staff from their very own nation, however other than humanizing anecdotes about how the divers’ mother and father simply don’t get their hobbies, they’re laser-focused on the rationale they’ve been summoned to Thailand: to rescue endangered children.

Vasarhelyi and Chin additionally do a superb job of illustrating simply how harmful this cave system actually is. With a skillful mixture of CGI maps, which preserve the viewers oriented, and disturbingly claustrophobic footage within the tight, jagged, rocky underwater caverns, “The Rescue” immerses the viewers in a spot the place — because the movie continuously reminds us — just a few rational individuals would ever be keen to go.

And go they do, many times, as they seek for the lacking kids and, upon discovering them, attempt to resolve the absurdly troublesome riddle of getting them out of there. It’s an extended and arduous journey for even skilled cave-divers. There’s no conceivable approach {that a} group of malnourished and frightened kids are going to have the ability to make it on their first go.

Watching clever individuals resolve a fancy downside is riveting, so watching the heroes of “The Rescue” step by step come to the conclusion that their solely believable resolution is objectively horrible and doubtless doomed to failure is among the movie’s many highlights. (The complete Elon Musk debacle, the place the billionaire pitched the thought of utilizing underwater submarines, doesn’t even warrant a flippant footnote in Vasarhelyi and…