While the elements that do not work frustrate, the stuff revolving around those who truly deserve to be labeled as heroes thankfully never does.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 22, 2016

There is plenty of drama and suspense in this true-life story, but the screenplay relies too heavily on formula and is swathed in Hollywood sentimentality.

| Jun 21, 2016

Corny as it was, I cried when the men were rescued.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 12, 2016

Riggen methodically juxtaposes crises above and below ground level, the only stylistic surprise being a scene that recalls a hallucinatory moment from Oliver Stone's wholly superior World Trade Center.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 31, 2016

The notion of a browned-up Juliette Binoche playing a humble Chilean street-food seller deserves the snorting it will undoubtedly trigger.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 30, 2016

Once seen, instantly forgotten.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 29, 2016

A conventional but gripping dramatisation.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 28, 2016

Riggen's account... is more thoughtful than the average disaster movie.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 28, 2016

It's pretty hokey but likable, and the fantasy "last supper" scene is tear-jerking stuff.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 28, 2016

The astonishing true life story of The 33 deserves a better than movie than this. Trite above and below ground, it is not suitable for miners. Or anyone else really.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 28, 2016

How a film with this many faults can still deliver the emotive release it's angling for is not, perhaps, as mysterious as it seems - you can hack away at it with a pickaxe, but this story's indestructible.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 28, 2016

You may never go down to your basement again without a headlamp and a 10-day food supply.

| Original Score: B | Nov 16, 2015

If we could unearth these guys from their living tomb, how hard is it to find nonwhite actors to play real people? ... Miner story, major fail.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 13, 2015

Mostly aims for easily mined deposits of nerves and heartstrings, rather than the more stubborn, more rewarding veins of character and soul.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 13, 2015

"The 33" is exactly what you can expect or hope with this story: a tense and uplifting film that puts an unbelievable true story to celluloid.

| Original Score: B | Nov 13, 2015

You forgive the movie its faults, or most of them, because its heart is firmly in the right place.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 13, 2015

This unabashedly crowd-pleasing movie gets to its uplifting but also somewhat disquieting conclusion and coda (which, as is the custom these days, introduces the audience to the real-life miners) with its integrity intact.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 13, 2015

The 33 is not a failure. It's a crowd-pleasing, sentimental, middle-of-the-road venture suitable for any audience. And that's a pity, because the subject matter cries out for a much more muscular treatment.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 13, 2015

The strength of those miners and the unlikely hope of their families, was utterly captivating. Their survival moved me deeply then and, with The 33, it still does now.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 13, 2015

It's never a good sign when the real people behind a movie's story appear in the end credits and you're stumped as to who's who.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 13, 2015