The 33

The story behind The 33, of the Chilean miners who became trapped for over 60 days when the mine they were working in collapsed back in August 2010 probably would have been better suited for a TV mini series.  This approach would have given the characters more room for focus and identity.  Still, given what's up on the screen and the just over two hour time constraint to tell the story, the movie does an admirable job, and is surprisingly intense at times, especially considering we already know walking in how the story turned out.

The main hurdle that most audiences will probably have to cross in watching this film is not how accurate it is to the real story, but rather the casting.  The movie features a rather internationally diverse cast playing these characters, including Antonio Banderas, Lou Diamond Phillips, French actress Juliette Binoche, and Irish actor Gabriel Byrne.  Seeing actors like Binoche and Byrne playing Chileans at first is a bit bizarre, and yet, my mind was able to get over it rather quickly, and I just focused on the performances.  If this kind of ethnic casting offends you, it may be harder for you to get into or get behind the film.  Would it have been nice if director Patricia Riggen had cast those roles who actors who share the same ethnic background of the people they're playing?  Of course.  But, the movie never really draws attention to it, and the actors are strong enough in their performances that it did not bother me as much as I thought it would.

What did bother me just a little bit is how the movie simplifies these characters by putting them into cliched categories.  The film opens with a backyard cookout scene, where all the miners are introduced, and placed into convenient character types.  There's the elderly miner who is (say it with me)...two weeks away from retirement.  There's the young miner whose wife is about to have their first child, so he is considering leaving the mining business.  There's the miner who hopes he can pick up an extra shift because he could use the money, and ends up going down with the others right before it collapses, and they become trapped by a rock which is described as being two times the mass of the Empire State Building.  While they are trapped, they learn that they only have three days worth of food and rations to split among each other.  Tensions obviously run high through the group trapped below, and there are a couple intense moments (one miner contemplates ending his life at one point) but the movie does play it fairly safe, and never seems to place them in too much danger.

The stuff that I found more interesting are the scenes that depict what is happening outside of the mine, as families and friends of the trapped miners start demanding answers, and don't even know if their loved ones are alive down there.  This part of the film portrays the efforts of the government, represented mostly by a young minister (Rodrigo Santoro) who is charged by the President to get the men out of there.  He teams up with an experienced mining engineer (Gabriel Byrne), who starts off explaining to the minster and the audience the difficulties that those trapped miners faced, and the very real chance that they could be dead while they figure out a way to get to them down there.  Not only do Santoro and Byrne have good chemistry together up on the screen, but it was fascinating to learn about the methods they used in the rescue, and the difficulties that they faced.  These moments proved to be the most dramatically fascinating moments of the film to me.

And yet, there is plenty up on the screen to keep us engaged in the story.  Not only are the performances strong, making the characters stand out more than their thinly written personalities allow, but director Riggen does try a few interesting and unexpected elements in the film.  Chief among them is a fantasy sequence where the starving miners begin to dream about a hallucinatory feast, which ends up being touching and very funny at the same time.  There's also a fine music score by the late composer James Horner, which complements the action well, without playing up the drama of the situation.  Like the best background scores, it doesn't force emotion on us, or tell us how we're supposed to feel during a scene.  It's subtle, and always seems fitting for whatever happens to be up on the screen. 

The 33 is not exactly a hard-hitting movie.  It's a big, heartfelt crowd pleaser, and very much a Hollywood production.  That alone can probably tell you if this movie is for you or not.  Yes, the movie is very manipulative at times, and doesn't go very deep into the story.  But I admired how it was made, and the dual plotlines both inside and outside the mine held my attention.  With so many characters behind it, this would be a difficult story for any filmmaker to tell.  And while it's not perfect, it does its job well enough.

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