A movie re-telling the incredible rescue of the Wild Boars junior football team from the Tham Luang cave in Thailand is now streaming for free.
Released in 2022, Thirteen Lives was directed by Ron Howard and followed the efforts to save 12 teenage boys and their assistant coach after they ventured into a cave and were trapped by floodwaters in 2018.
The group were stuck for two weeks, with an international rescue effort involving as many as 10,000 people including 100 divers, undertaken to save them.
Some of those credited with helping to save the boys included British civilian divers – Rick Stanton and John Volanthen.
In the movie they were played by Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell, with Joel Edgerton also playing Australian cave diver Richard Harris.
The film – which holds an 85% rating on Rotten Tomatoes – was praised for its portrayal of ‘courage and survival’. After initially being released on Amazon Prime, this week it was also added to BBC iPlayer.
‘Thirteen Lives is an affecting look at one of the most incredible events of the past decade,’ ScreenRant wrote in its review.
‘A masterful piece of humanistic cinema that also doubles as a heart-stopping adventure,’ FilmInk shared.
‘Even now, years later, that level of teamwork is breathtaking, and Howard’s choice to chronicle those efforts gives Thirteen Lives its own kind of staying power,’ The Hollywood Reporter added.
Another review said it was a ‘riveting depiction of a daring, foolhardy, inspired rescue’.
Meanwhile viewers said it was ‘inspiring’, ‘deeply moving’ and a ‘powerful examination of true heroism’.
Discussing the film at the time of its release, Mortensen and Farrell praised the ‘selfless’ and ‘multifaceted’ effort to rescue the boys, with the former also speaking about the ‘crucial’ need to have the divers on set to supervise.
‘Whenever you’re underwater [in] caves, it’s dangerous,’ he shared. ‘So, I think all the actors, we listened very carefully to what they were showing and telling us and watched what they did very carefully and everybody worked hard.
‘Everybody pulled together… and that reflected the real rescue and that it was a very selfless, team-oriented effort.’
Meanwhile Farrell spoke about the movie being a ‘great gift’ for him to be a part of.
‘I’ve done various things in my career but to be part of something that… in a time where the world seems to be living under greater and greater division, was really about these different people from different nationalities, different cultural backgrounds coming together for a common purpose, and one that was so terrifying, it was just a great gift,’ he said.
Over three days – between July 8 and 10, 2018 – all 12 boys and their coach Ekkaphon Kanthawong were rescued from the cave.
However, despite the incredible result – two men had died while the rescue had been underway.
Royal Thai Navy SEAL Saman Kunan, 37, died of asphyxiation during an attempted rescue on July 6 while returning to a staging base in the cave after delivering diving cylinders to the trapped group.
The following year, in December 2019, rescue diver and Thai Navy SEAL Beirut Pakbara died of a blood infection contracted during the operation.
The movie was dedicated to them both.
Tragically the captain of the team, Duangphet Phromthep, died by suicide aged 17 in 2023 after moving to England on a football scholarship.
Thirteen Lives is streaming on BBC iPlayer.
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