User reviews

As a reporter who covered the real cave incident last year (2018), I feel ambivalent about this movie. I cannot enjoy it totally because the actual incident was about life and death and time that was running out fast. But I also worked in a lifestyle and entertainment editorial section and I appreciate the fact that The Cave is a movie, not a documentary, so we still need to separate fact from fiction. What I want to say is that it's a very all right movie if you are not very serious about accuracy. The movie needed heroes and villains for the script to work, but the reality that I covered has every single person as the hero and there is no villain, only conflicts stemming from good intentions.

The first half of the film didn't really connect with me. I thought it was not gripping enough to be a film, and not informative enough to be a documentary. The second half managed to turn the tide, and of course the ending got me in tears. I applaud everyone involved in the rescue. I was also impressed that so many people played themselves in the film. Wow. I would have liked to see more on how the boys stayed alive in the cave, but I guess there was not enough time to tell so much story.

This film is not perfect. It's not as cinematic as the Ron Howard movie, it's somewhat 'slow' for our standards, but I still think it's worth watching and I enjoyed it.

It's like a crossover between documentary and fiction. This film focuses mainly on the efforts that surrounded the four lead British divers rather than that group itself. A lot of room is given to the Thai people, to the support divers, to the logistics.

The story is definitely not told with an epic tone, but has a rather realistic hue to it. If you're interested in the story, and you've already seen The Rescue and Thirteen Lives, I think this is a nice addiction. It gives you bits and pieces of extra information. It works better after watching those two, rather than as stand alone film.

Twelve young boys and their coach being trapped in a cave - it was world news for about 3 weeks. When the movie comes you expect to get something more out of it than an overview of the news headlines and a presentation of facts you already know. I would have expect some more insight of what the impact was on the team, but the boys themselves get no more than 10 minutes or so screening time. What is it like to find out that you are trapped in a cave. How do you deal with the darkness, dampness, lack of food, fresh water and sanitary facilities? How do you cope with being cut off from the outside world not knowing what efforts are being made there and how long it will take before someone finds you? This film makes you none the wiser. Instead the focus is on some guy arranging pumps, and else I could hardly make out a story line. On top of this the cinematography is exhausting. Hand held camera most of the time in very close up producing images on the big screen that are constantly moving are no pleasure to watch. This film adds nothing to anything and is a waste of time. My four stars are on the generous side.

We need to separate out the amazing story that was the rescue of the football team, from this awful movie.

There are many lessons to be learned from this dreadful project - first to market is not always a good thing. Getting real life participants to recreate their parts often doesn't work - and ends up in repeated scenes where they just grunt. Employing low cost actors (perhaps to make them look like real people) doesn't work well either. Focussing on little bits of story that haven't had much coverage (water pumps man) just gets tedious. Repeated scenes of people cheering and congratulating each other gets really tedious. Repeated shots of murky diving gets exceedingly tedious.

Wait for a better movie version of this story, save your time and money, and avoid this film.

Many Thais rejected this movie after discovering the producer and director change the actual story. Most of the decision making on rescuing the kids in the cave were made by Thai authorities, but the movie shows that foreigners decide the rescue.

Many local people watch movie in the the cinema and just walk out from the theatre after 20 - 30 mins and unhappy with the scene.

I am gracious of the director putting the case into the movie. I know it from news, but never know the details. It is like seeing a very long news report. Since the incident is happened not for long, I am very interested to see the details.

The movie is full of negative comments. Yes, all the comments are true. But i like to point out is that timing is very important. If a very good movie is put on the screen ten years later I would lose my interest no matter what.

For the present movie I am simply urged to finish it, despite its technical drawbacks. And it is so happy to know some actors is the actual person in the incident.

In all, the movie is ok to me, and I hope more of this movie, like one on COVID 19, could be put on big screen timely.

While the real life story of the Thai boys football teams rescue was wonderful, this film was an extremely poor production. The real people playing themselves is comical at times, through no real fault of their own. Afterall they arent actors. Its very poorly laid out and extremely slow.

Someone recently said this was an awful firm about a really heartwarming story. Unfortunately, this firm goes even further that that - it is worse than awful. Avoid this like the plague it is. If you really want to see the story, check out the Discovery Channel short about it - MUCH better.

Saw this at Bangkok Screening Room, February 2020.

It was really not so good. Uneven pacing, poor cinematography (especially in the cave), zero character development resulting in no emotional investment from the viewer. The boys and the coach are one-dimensional stick figures with practically no dialogue.

The cast was a mix of professional actors and actual people who were on the scene of the event playing themselves, which sounds all right in theory but resulted in some laughably bad acting. Real actors should have been used for the entire film.

The film was produced in a short time frame immediately after the events actually took place, which might explain some of the bad choices made during production and make them almost forgivable, and the set design and production looked realistic enough-I think it was filmed on-site-so I give the film 3 stars for effort.

But don't waste your time. Just watch some clips of the real thing from YouTube.

Bad in everythings about movie. Directing ,scripts, acting, cutting etc . Even order situations the team can't do. I cant stand to watch to the end.

Local authorities did not like this film because the author wanted to tell the truth about some facts that actually happened. To do this, the director even used the same people as witnesses to the facts that actually happened. Nonetheless, the director was accused of telling the fake, obviously by the culprits. I hope this film will serve as an example for other Thai directors in the future. Freedom in the creative process must not be tied in any way, especially in a historical moment like this where there are people who are paying only for having said the pure truth.

What a bad movie. Very amateurish, with generic dialogue and music. The drama is non-existent so the whole thing is flat and boring. The boys are hardly shown in the cave and don't even seem that bothered by their ordeal, so that as a viewer I didn't care much about them. After three days inside they are just a bit thirsty. Okay.

This was just a terrible movie. Such a shame as it could be a thrilling and gripping film.

I saw this film at the London Film Festival. It depicts the events of an unprecedented emergency on a worldwide scale. A rare piece of history retold by some of the only people that really know. The people that fully experienced the event. A rare and privileged opportunity is given to the viewer by the sharing of this perspective.

The movie was great which is based on true story. This is just a movie not a documentary.

Unfortunately this film feels like it was put together from all the outtakes of the other films made about this amazing rescue effort. I though that the Ron Howard film Thirteen Lives managed to capture the real drama in the rescue and is far the best of the bunch of films that have been made. The Netflix drama series Thai Cave Resue was overlong and didn't really add much to the storey though did focus more on the boys themselves. The documentary The Rescue was Ok but not a drama. I understand that this film has been re-edited for another release with a revised title - Cave Rescue. That might improve it but not certain it can rescue it!!

One could venture the absence of checks and balances allowed this to happen. Tom Waller directed, produced and co-wrote Cave Rescue. It has "passion project" written all over.

Excellent story and beautiful film . Beautifully shot at great locations . Good choice of cast including some of the actual team involved in the incident . Well selected theme music .

This film focuses on the rescuers, in particular one of the International divers, an Irishman. But it also makes time for the local heroes of this story - the farmers whose livelihoods were threatened by the rescue efforts, the people providing food for the rescuers and, in a near film-stealing turn, a local drainage expert. Using the real people rather than actors in some instances does mean their performances seem a little stilted, but the trade-off is that as you warm to them you know you're warming to the real people (and you really do warm to them). The film also does a very effective job of conveying the chaos as multiple agencies, nationalities, languages and skill-sets try to coordinate a massive operation under incredible time pressure, as the waters are predicted to rise still further and make any rescue impossible. It's a real feat to convey all the logistics of the events while still foregrounding the human element. By the end if you're not wiping away a tear then there's something wrong with you.

Seeing this movie really warmed my heart, having spent a great deal of time in Asia. Worth the wait, and thanks to Tom Waller for making sucha. heartfelt movie.