Writers: Mikko Alanne, Craig Borten, Michael Thomas
Director: Patricia Riggen
The Chilean mining disaster of 2010 which gripped an entire planet is given a feelgood Hollywood makeover as regular guy Mario Sepúlveda (played by Antonio Banderas, trying to look like a regular guy as best he can) suddenly finds himself the de facto leader of a group trapped over 700 metres below ground, running out of food, wondering if a rescue attempt is even possible. On the surface, the families of the men wait and worry while Government aide Laurence Golborne (Santoro) is landed with the unenviable task of getting all 33 miners out alive.
Patricia Riggen's movie certainly looks to tick the box marked "feelgood" and, as a result, you'll be hard-pushed to find much of the grit and grime of what must have been an utterly terrifying situation. Even the subject of the rapidly dwindling food supplies is not particularly dwelt upon and the hideous prospect of slowly starving to death is over-ridden by an emphasis on the triumph of the human spirit and the importance of camaraderie in times of extreme hardship. Whilst this is laudable it also downplays the dire nature of the miners' plight almost to the point where it's an inconvenience rather than a bunch of workers staring death in the face.
The casting veers from spot-on to inconceivable.
Let's take the spot-on first. Banderas is excellent as the man who came to be dubbed "Super Mario" and despite the fact it's impossible to make the guy even ordinary-looking - no, giving him a beard and smearing him in muck doesn't even come close to achieving it - he convinces as the family-loving everyman who believes that he and his "brothers" will be saved.
Lou Diamond Phillips escapes the straight-to-DVD mire he's been wading through of late to score an effective performance as Don Lucho, a veteran of the industry who questions his own worth and his possible complicity in the disaster's occurrence. Santoro bucks the trend of Government aides in movies being self-serving douchebags and we feel his agony and ecstacy as he attempts to move heaven and earth (well, a bloody big rock anyway) in order to reunite the 33 with their loved ones above ground.
Okay, now to the inconceivable. Juliette Binoche as a ballsy, full-on Chilean seller of empanadas? I have read that Ms Binoche was a late replacement for Jennifer Lopez (who, bizarrely enough, I couldn't have seen in the role either, so...) and to be fair she does give it the role her usual level of commitment and craft but it was still difficult for me to see past the fact that she was an odd choice for the part.Those empanadas looked good though.
A similar occurrence of my "huh?" face greeted Gabriel Byrne's appearance as an expert in drilling. A Chilean expert in drilling. Again, his acting's not in question here but I'm not sure his Latin American accent is a hundred per cent convincing and, yes, it's Juliette Binoche Syndrome again only this time they took the guy from The Usual Suspects and said "okay, now you're South American". I know there's some commercial thinking in casting some reasonably well-known faces but surely there are talented and engaging peformers from Chile who could have portrayed drilling experts and empanada sellers without me sitting there thinking "Why?".
Despite the fact that I now think I must have missed the phone call to play one of the Chilean miners ("Yes, call that really white guy, he'll be amazing"), despite the fact that a large proportion of the Disaster Movie Cliché playbook is referenced and despite the fact that the late James Horner's score is utilised in far too nudging and insistent ways - if you see Chilean villagers above ground, get ready for the Andean pipes and acoustic guitar because they're on the way - this film is so good-natured that it feels wrong to bash it completely. It isn't exactly subtle in the way it plays on the emotions but there's a good chance you will be fighting back the tears at certain points and you'll be anticipating the rescue almost as much as Banderas and his colleagues.
At one point in the movie, in between flogging those tasty empanadas, Maria (Binoche) says to Golborne that she aims to please but that she generally misses the target. Not by much, though. This happens to be a very apt description of this movie, there's no question that it aims to please - in fact it's so eager to please that it fumbles its way through a series of could-have-been-better sequences - and in no way does it score a bullseye but it's an entertaining enough miss and The 33's ramshackle charms ultimately prove enchanting even if you get the feeling that there's a far more interesting story that could have been told.
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