‘The Cave’ movie review
By Jerrison Oracion, Senior Columnist
5/5
It’s been more than a year ago since a Thai boys soccer team was rescued from the Tham Luang cave in Thailand.
The rescue was made possible by many organizations not only from Thailand but also from the rest of the world. Organizations of divers and first responders came to help out and additionally the military. The entire world watched as divers tried to get the team of boys out of the cave before heavy rainfall would flood the cave again and make it impossible to get out. The definitive account of the entire mission is shown in the 2019 film The Cave.
The film shows how the many rescuers and volunteers were able to figure out the complex task of getting everyone out of the cave with a limited amount of time. Many of the people that were involved in the mission were featured in the film—including four of the divers that saved the lives of everyone in the cave.
Adding the real heroes to this movie caused the film to be very realistic, as though it was filmed when it happened. The film is similar to Patriots Day, in the way that it gives very specific details of the progress made by rescuers. The film’s score sounds like it could be made by Hans Zimmer.
When the film was shown in the Vancouver International Film Festival. The director of the film, Tom Waller, and two of the rescuers who consulted the director on the film, Jim Warny and Erik Brown, were in attendance. During the Q&A at one of the screenings, they talked about how they made the film. Waller got the idea of making the film when he watched the coverage of the cave rescue.
Waller was able to get most of the people that were involved in the mission by asking Warny to play himself in the film. After that, Warny told Brown about it, Brown agreed to it, and that led to more first responders participating in the film. They were also able to get the coach of the soccer team—but not the members of the soccer team since the Thai government already signed with Netflix for a miniseries on the boys.
The Cave was not filmed in Tham Luang for it’s entirety—part of it was filmed in other caves in eastern Thailand because the Thai government did not allow them to film inside Tham Luang until January—when the water had safely subsided. Also, Waller was worried that he had to edit the film when it went through the Thai censors, but he was able to present it the way he wanted to show it without cuts from the government.
After the Q&A, the Other Press asked Waller how much of the dialogue in the script is from actual conversations in the rescue, and he responded with the fact that most of it is from actual conversations. The Other Press then asked Warny and Brown what the hardest thing they had to do during the mission was.
Warny told the Other Press that holding the boys was very hard since they are heavy and carrying them underwater through the cave was difficult. Brown said that it was hard to communicate with the rest of the team since they could not talk to the control room at any point, and he also said the conditions inside the cave were challenging.
The Cave is an inspiring film that shows that when everyone works together, a positive outcome can happen.
