Six years ago, the Chilean San José mining disaster left 33 men trapped underground; the whole world was gripped and the 93-year-old Hollywood actor Kirk Douglas remarked that he was reminded of his movie Ace in the Hole, in which he played an unscrupulous reporter covering a similar situation, scheming to delay the rescue and spin the story out.
In this big-hearted, good-natured movie treatment of “the 33” and their ordeal, the media are not the villains. Neither are the politicians, not really. The bad guys would appear to be the mine’s owners who neglected safety, but their iniquities are not dwelt on. This is a feelgood disaster movie.
Antonio Banderas plays Mario Sepúlveda, the guy who becomes the trapped miners’ unofficial leader in their subterranean hellhole. Clean-cut Rodrigo Santoro plays presidential aide Laurence Golborne, Juliette Binoche is borderline preposterous in the role of a miner’s downtrodden sister, and Gabriel Byrne plays a mining engineer who has to get them out and does everything except say: “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking!”
It’s pretty hokey but likable, and the fantasy “last supper” scene is tear-jerking stuff.
