Inside Colin Farrell’s explosive new movie about the Thai cave rescue

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The actor plays a heroic caver in Thirteen Lives. The film is no white-saviour narrative, as its director Ron Howard explains

Thirteen Lives: Colin Farrell as John Volanthen, Joel Edgerton as Richard ‘Harry’ Harris and Viggo Mortensen as Rick Stanton. Photograph: Vince Valitutti/MGMOne day Rick Stanton, a retired firefighter, got a phone call at his home in Coventry in England. It was Ron Howard. He had good news. He had cast someone who had been in Lord of the Rings to play Stanton in his new movie, Thirteen Lives. Stanton’s mind raced. Ian McKellen? Andy Serkis? Probably not Cate Blanchett.

So how did he come up with the plan? “The monsoons were coming in and the rest of the caves risked being flooded. We needed to act. Harry didn’t think it would work, but we had no plan B. We thought we were going to be bringing out 13 corpses. Nothing like this had ever been attempted before.” Anyone hoping for a story in which heroic Brits and Aussies save the day while the locals cheer from the sidelines is in for a shock. Howard’s film meticulously shows that the rescue effort involved more than 10,000 people, mostly Thai, but with volunteers flying in from around the world to offer their skills.

A key moment in the film comes when Natisri tells farmers that, if they are to slow down the water flow that risks drowning the boys, their fields must be flooded with diverted rainwater that will destroy their crops. A spokeswoman agrees and the fields are promptly flooded for the greater good.Cave rescue: the real John Volanthen, whom Colin Farrell plays in Thirteen Lives.

“These spiritual matters are very live for a lot of people in the area,” he says. “There’s not only karma but for some of the parents what happened to their children was seen as a kind of test of character. One that they passed, incidentally. I went to long lengths to show this without, I hope, being voyeuristic.”

Thirteen Lives bears closest comparison to Apollo 13, from 1995, which also depicted a real-life disaster. Astronauts hoping to become the third Nasa crew to land on the moon are confounded by an on-board explosion that depletes the spacecraft’s oxygen supply and power. The mission becomes about saving the lives of the astronauts with a plan hatched by Nasa staff in Houston and the crew.

 

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