''The Rescue'' is a 2021

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

directed and produced by

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi (; born ) is an American documentary filmmaker. She was the director, along with her husband, Jimmy Chin, for the film ''Free Solo'', which won the 2019 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film profiled Alex ...

and

Jimmy Chin Jimmy Chin (born ) is an American professional mountain athlete, photographer, film director, and author. Chin has been a professional climber and skier on The North Face Athlete team for over 20 years. In 2006, Chin achieved the first succes ...

. It follows the

Tham Luang cave rescue In June and July 2018, a junior association football team and their assistant coach were rescued from the Tham Luang Nang Non cave in Chiang Rai Province in northern Thailand. Twelve members of the team, aged 11 to 16, and their 25-year-old ass ...

, a 2018 mission that saved a junior

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

team from an underwater cave. The film had its world premiere at the

48th Telluride Film Festival The 48th Telluride Film Festival took place on September 2–6, 2021 in Telluride, Colorado, United States. After the cancellation of the previous year's event due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Colorado, the festival required proof of vaccination ...

on September 2, 2021, and was theatrically released in the United States on October 8, 2021.

Synopsis

The film follows the

Production

In March 2019, it was announced Kevin Macdonald would direct a documentary film revolving around the

, with National Geographic Documentary Films set to produce. In February 2021, it was announced

and

would replace Macdonald as director, though he would remain as executive producer on the project. The filmmakers had difficulty securing rights to the story, with National Geographic able to secure the rights to the divers' story, while

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...

had acquired rights to the experiences of the soccer team, preventing them from telling their story in the film.

Release

The film had its world premiere at the

on September 2, 2021. It was also screened at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2021, where it won the People's Choice Award for Documentaries.

Greenwich Entertainment Greenwich Entertainment, founded in 2017, is an independent film distribution company specializing in distinctive, theatrical-quality narrative and documentary features. The company released Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi’s Academy Award-Wi ...

will distribute the film in the United States.

Reception

Box office

In its opening weekend, the film made $69,669 from five theaters.

Critical response

According to

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, 96% of 91 critics have given the film a positive review, with an average rating of 8.5/10.

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

assigned the film a weighted average score of 86 out of 100 based on 18 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Michael O'Sullivan of ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'' gave the film 4/4 stars, writing: "As with Chin and Vasarhelyi's previous films, ignore any instinct you may have to pass up this movie because it sounds too hyper-specific: an activity you're not really that interested in, and a story whose ending you've already heard." Simran Hans of ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...

'' gave the film 4/5 stars, describing it as a "hugely involving documentary", and wrote: "Vasarhelyi and Chin recreate the sense of the clock running down as oxygen levels in the cave decrease, while the monsoon outside rages." Kevin Maher of ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'' also gave the film 4/5 stars, writing: "the film-makers somehow manage to wring nerve-jangling tension from a foregone conclusion". John Lui of ''

The Straits Times ''The Straits Times'' is an English-language daily broadsheet newspaper based in Singapore and currently owned by SPH Media Trust (previously Singapore Press Holdings). ''The Sunday Times'' is its Sunday edition. The newspaper was established ...

'' also gave the film 4/5 stars, writing: "By calmly describing everything that could go wrong while hauling 13 non-divers across 4 km of twisty, submerged passages, the experts evoke a sense of dread that would make a horror film-maker proud." Leslie Felperin of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' gave the film 3/5 stars, writing: "Not only is the story compelling, but thanks to how much the event captured the interest of the world's media, there is a lot of archive footage to splice in among the generous wodges of talking-heads narration from the main participants." However, she criticized the music used towards the end of the film as "cheesy" and questioned why the rescued children were not interviewed. Roxana Hadadi of '' RogerEbert.com'' was more critical of the film, giving it 2.5/4 stars. She wrote: "between Vasarhelyi and Chin's inability to speak with the boys or their families, and the documentary's initially languid pacing, "The Rescue" feels like half a story told fairly well, but still, half a story." Cassie Da Costa of ''Vanity Fair'' wrote that the film "plods along without taking any formal risks", adding: "I couldn't shake the feeling of watching a network TV documentary, designed to feed the audience with detail after detail, but not to generate any significant ideas from the facts and images it contains."

Awards and nominations

References

External links

Rescue , National Geographic Documentary Films , Interview with Co-Director Chai Vasarhelyi
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rescue, The (2021 film) 2021 films 2021 documentary films American documentary films British documentary films Documentary films about underwater diving National Geographic Society films Films directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi Films directed by Jimmy Chin Films scored by Daniel Pemberton Films shot in Chiang Rai province Tham Luang cave rescue 2020s English-language films 2020s American films 2020s British films