Almost as soon as the 33 men trapped in the San José mine in Chile were rescued, the disputes and recriminations over potential film adaptations of their extraordinary ordeal began to surface too; for low-paid men in a normally ignored industry in a marginalised part of the world, unwittingly caught up in a genuinely astonishing feat of derring-do that commandeered the world’s media for weeks, an unthought-of opportunity had opened up.
The disagreements are still rumbling along in the background, even as the film is unveiled: a modestly budgeted Hollywood production, starring Antonio Banderas and Juliette Binoche, with the Mexican-born director of Girl in Progress, Patricia Riggen, behind the camera. While the release of The 33 may not have been preceded by a widely seen documentary on the same subject – something that befell The Walk and Steve Jobs, and appears to have marred their commercial chances – the news footage of the ordeal is so familiar that a feature would have to offer up something pretty special to compensate.
Unfortunately, The 33 doesn’t. It’s a solid, well-constructed film that gets across the basic story of the mine collapse and the subsequent race to drill down and reach the trapped crew, graced with one or two special-effects sequences to add a bit of punch. But, hamstrung by the inevitable decision to film in English, there’s a fundamental disconnect between performer and dialogue: scenes that should be emotional, gritty, or tender, come off as weird, comic, or plain cheesy. Added to which, there’s a definite movie-of-the-week sensibility about The 33, with its heavily signposted plot points and rammed-home character arcs.
Banderas, who has cut quite a dash in non-Spanish roles in the past, can do little with the heavy-footed moves his character – Mario Sepúlveda, the so-called “Super Mario” of the group, who made the daily videotapes that fuelled the media effort – is required to make. Some of his lines – “That’s the heart of the mountain; and she finally broke!” – are properly toe-curling. Binoche, who came in as a late replacement for Jennifer Lopez, has a less ingratiating role to work with, as the sister of one of the miners who harasses government officials into getting their act together, but again is given some cumbersome situations to negotiate.
Still, the basic story survives intact: a barely credible chronicle of catastrophe, incompetence, heroism, and a full geyser’s-worth of that commodity so prized by film producers: the human spirit.
As an act of topping off the miners’ story, the film leaves something to be desired: extracting tears from the same people who sobbed at the real-life drama is a trickier proposition than it perhaps first looked. In any case, The 33 is unlikely to be the final act. One day someone might make a film about all the behind-the-scenes action; though not likely to be attempting to tug at the heartstrings as resolutely as The 33, it certainly should be more worth watching.
