Thirteen Lives Leaves the Viewer Stuck Between Rocks and Ron Howard
At the heart of the new film Thirteen Lives lies a paradox. On the one hand, Ron Howard can be boring and annoying. On the other, caves are really cool, and we all want to see a group of teenagers get rescued from deep in the bowels of one.
Thira Chutikul and Viggo Mortensen in a scene from Thirteen Lives. (Vince Valitutti / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures / Amazon Prime Video)
I finally got around to watching Thirteen Lives, the drama on Amazon about the Thai cave rescue of 2018. If it seems like a familiar narrative, that’s because the rescue was not only a breathlessly covered international media event, it’s also the subject of a 2021 documentary called The Rescue.
I was reluctant to watch Thirteen Lives because it’s directed by Ron Howard, a “meh” conventional talent at best. And to top that off, his last film was Hillbilly Elegy, which damns him to Film Hell forevermore. He is not, and never will be, forgiven.
But on the other hand, caves are cool, and they’re intensely cinematic, as long as the inevitable reproduction of cave environments is done well for the purposes of filming, which it is here. Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom does an impressive job seamlessly matching cave sets to the location shooting in Thailand.
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