Finding them was the easy part. Sure, it took eight full days, several tons of specialized equipment, thousands of volunteers diverting a monsoon, the entire Thai Navy Seals team, and ultimately a small hand-picked group of eccentric hobbyists imported from the other side of the world, but ultimately, they found the lost boys. That was the easy part.
In the summer of 2018, a boys soccer team and their assistant coach went spelunking in the Tham Luang cave system in northern Thailand. While exploring a very intricate and lengthy section, the team became trapped by a flood of heavy rains. They would spend more than two weeks of their lives trapped deep inside that wormhole. Cut off completely from the rest of the world for the entirety of the first week, the boys had neither food nor light nor any reasonable hope of survival, let alone The Rescue.
Pretty intense, huh? Just wait until you see this thing.
By nightfall of Day 1, the villagers knew exactly where the Wild Boars were and had a good idea of how much trouble they were in. The cave system in question is roughly ten kilometers long and only small remote pockets would be able to stay dry for up to six or seven hours without serious intervention.
If I’m not painting the picture accurately, let me illustrate the dilemma in more detail. Imagine six miles of one continuous cave with, basically, only one fork, a river that goes three miles in the wrong direction. Most of the cave is thinner than the interior hallway of a cheap hotel. During many stretches, the passageway is much thinner than that, like doorway or window sized. At several intervals labeled one through nine, based on their location in the cave from safety, there is a wider opening, one the size of, say, a cheap hotel lobby. Past three, the passages between lobbies are completely flooded. There are hundreds of meters of claustrophobic murk between each cavern. On top of that, this isn’t normal diving; the Thai Seals camped out at three and gave up. The Wild Boars are at lobby nine.
On this point, the documentary is a little thin, for one thing, it never once mentioned whether the Wild Boars were forced to forfeit their remaining games.
Early on in the endeavor, it was realized that the Thai Seals would not be able to get the job done, and specialists were called upon. So a small band of English cave-diving introverts descended on the area. Their first 
order of business –unwittingly- was rescuing some rescue workers from station four. And then they gave up, citing the problems with rescuing the rescue workers. It would be several days before they returned to the caves – days that a soccer team lived at station nine.
Does it disturb anyone else that this is quite literally a real life White Savior tale?
The Rescue [dudes, I don’t want to tell you how to market, but you’re spoiling your own film with the title] is ultimately a vindication of weird hobbyists and weekend warriors alike. Don’t get me wrong; your spouses and hospitals may not think so, but to me, you are heroes … every one of you. Sure, your specialized skill set may seem arcane, egocentric, and self-defeating, but how likely was it, really, that dudes who were into undersea cave diving would be needed to rescue genuine human being, hmmm? The fact is that one can never, ever truly know when a specialized skill set might come in handy – so from the folks who paint figurines to those who raise ferrets, from expert stone skippers to magnificent dungeon masters, from bee keepers to X-Gamers to geocachers, I salute you all; keep doing what you’re doing because you never truly know when lives might be saved because you can assemble a standard 1,000 jigsaw puzzle in under three hours.
This is likely the most uplifting film I will see in 2021. I’m fairly confident that statement will hold even during Oscar season. In its own way, The Rescue is like the ultimate horror film, and like so many horror films, delivers the ultimate payoff.
In a tragedy not unlike Macbeth
A soccer team low on supplies and breath
Was stuck trapped in cramped size
Although you’d think they’d be wise
For a challenge to go into sudden death
Rated PG,107 Minutes
Director: Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Writer: Fate
Genre: Intensity
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Do you need an uplifting moment in your life?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: The heartless
