The Rescue: Film Review

Director: Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi

Free Solo's directors take on a story that everyone knows the resolution to - but it robs none of what transpires on the screen of its urgency and compelling nature.

In June 2018, when the Wild Boar soccer team became trapped by monsoon weather in the extensive and labyrinthine cave Tham Luang in Northern Thailand, the world watched hoping for a miracle.

For over 2 weeks, the boys and their coach were trapped, threatened by potential oxygen loss and rising rain waters pouring through into the caves. And still the world watched - as did the directors in the aftermath, feeling there was a film with high stakes to be told here.

But what could be a case of a mawkish and almost manipulative documentary becomes something so utterly compelling and intricately told that you'll almost forget you know exactly how it ends.

Using second hand footage, and clever graphics to show the intricacy of the caves, as well as a sprinkling of talking heads from those involved in the rescue, directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi carefully tell the sickening race-against-time story of the volunteer divers brought in from abroad.

It's in the interviews from Rick Stanton, John Volanthen and Aussie Richard Harry Harris that you get the true sense of what lay ahead for them and what they add to both the archival footage and the reconstructions is something utterly gripping.

"I've seen chaos, but not on this scale," one of them laments of the scene at the cave, and what the directors do is shape that chaos into something that becomes inspiring and so engrossingly told, that even though you know the outcome, you can't help but have your heart in your mouth as the end nears.

In fact, it's in the final rescue that the enormity of what lay ahead for the rescuers is tactfully and carefully laid bare. Scenes of boys being drugged, fitted with masks and pushed under water are frighteningly nightmarish in this doco, even though none of it is played for drama. The grim reality of the preparations are forensically mentioned, again showing the directors' flair for covering as much of this whirlwind as they could.

Whilst it's a shame The Rescue doesn't have anything from the families and the kids themselves other than archival footage, it does become a salutation of the unsung heroes of the operation - and a reminder that sometimes, just the careful construction of a story can prove to be utter dynamite for movie goers.