The Rescue and 13 Lives were released earlier and are both excellent, so I understand the desire to differentiate this production, however my opinion is the quest to bring a unique story has butchered what is the most dramatic rescue event in recent memory.
I watched this expecting a retelling of true events but with a focus on the boys - Netflix had pretty much exclusive access to their side of the story, the struggle they faced whilst trapped inside with no real option but to wait for their inevitable deaths - but came away disappointed as the extremely well publicised rescue tale was changed so dramatically from true events that it's hard to take anything at face value.
The first episode was quite compelling, but quickly the series descends into farce as the rescue gets underway. Real drama was replaced with artificial drama, the efforts of many of the thousands of volunteers glossed over or completely ignored to shoehorn in a pretty actress as the water engineer seemingly acting pretty much alone (well, aided by a park ranger) to reduce water levels in the cave. I just don't understand the need for such drastic changes when the true story is at least as dramatic and gripping as this highly fictionalised retelling.
The majority of western actors are fairly weak which further detracts. I can't really comment on the Thai cast members as watched with subtitles, but their contribution seemed better.
If you've not seen The Rescue or 13 Lives perhaps you'll come away from this feeling differently, but my main emotion was feeling incredibly underwhelmed. This could and should have been so much better.
I watched this expecting a retelling of true events but with a focus on the boys - Netflix had pretty much exclusive access to their side of the story, the struggle they faced whilst trapped inside with no real option but to wait for their inevitable deaths - but came away disappointed as the extremely well publicised rescue tale was changed so dramatically from true events that it's hard to take anything at face value.
The first episode was quite compelling, but quickly the series descends into farce as the rescue gets underway. Real drama was replaced with artificial drama, the efforts of many of the thousands of volunteers glossed over or completely ignored to shoehorn in a pretty actress as the water engineer seemingly acting pretty much alone (well, aided by a park ranger) to reduce water levels in the cave. I just don't understand the need for such drastic changes when the true story is at least as dramatic and gripping as this highly fictionalised retelling.
The majority of western actors are fairly weak which further detracts. I can't really comment on the Thai cast members as watched with subtitles, but their contribution seemed better.
If you've not seen The Rescue or 13 Lives perhaps you'll come away from this feeling differently, but my main emotion was feeling incredibly underwhelmed. This could and should have been so much better.