"With Thirteen Lives, Ron Howard effectively retells the daring retrieval of a young Thai soccer team from an increasingly deadly cave system."

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 15, 2025

Despite the film being based on a true occasion, Thirteen Lives never loses its momentum when it comes to delivering an equally educational and entertaining feature.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 25, 2024

The movie is a prime example of history repeating itself, to show that white saviour narratives are disappointing and take the focus away from the main objective.

| Sep 8, 2023

You stay for the cinematic underwater sequences and Viggo Mortensen splashing around in a wetsuit, but the rest flounders because of its direction, poor writing, and lack of psychological insight.

| Original Score: C- | Jul 29, 2023

It succeeds in what it’s trying to do, and I definitely felt that it was worth the watch, along with the time I invested into viewing it.

| Original Score: B | Jul 19, 2023

Told with urgency and sensitivity, the film diligently captures the massive scope of the international rescue effort — with all of its logistical, psychological, and sociopolitical complications — while maintaining a boots-on-the-ground intimacy.

| Jan 27, 2023

This is a fact-based account that holds true to everything I remember from the documentary, so it's not playing with the details as much as manipulating the emotions to adhere to more conventional narrative beats.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jan 13, 2023

The story itself is heart-pounding (and heart-tugging) enough, so Howard allows the actors to stay subtle and nearly fade into the background, never pulling focus for the audience from the dire circumstances of the situation.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 12, 2023

...the story was told better by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi in the 2021 documentary The Rescue, making Howard’s film the equivalent of an English-language remake of a film already done better in another language.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Jan 2, 2023

I saw someone say that this is like Ron Howard made a Clint Eastwood movie, and yes.

| Dec 6, 2022

Thirteen Lives is certainly watchable and the diving sequences are excruciatingly tense and brilliantly delivered, but if you know the story, there's little else to find here.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 2, 2022

Ron Howard offers a compelling depiction of the 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue...the film pivots from a thrilling depiction of real events, to a moving meditation on the power of community.

| Dec 2, 2022

When Thirteen Lives directs its energies toward illustrating the impossibility of the divers’ mission, the film is solidly compelling.

| Dec 2, 2022

This is a really good movie, full of drama and heroism, but I couldn't help comparing it to National Geographic's documentary film depicting the same rescue. This one just isn't quite as good.

| Original Score: B+ | Dec 2, 2022

A claustrophobic, suspenseful survival film that knows how to tell its story, Thirteen Lives doesn’t get boring once. The characters have a clear objective, and you will be drawn into the mystery of how they will succeed in their goal.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Nov 30, 2022

Ron Howard plays all the right notes in this retelling of the dramatic rescue of a boys’ football team from a flooded cave-in.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 30, 2022

“Thirteen Lives” is an expertly made hollow shell. It’s like looking at a department store window with nothing in it.

| Nov 26, 2022

Thirteen Lives is a beautiful depiction of the power of working together for hope.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 21, 2022

The element of breath, the play of water and air, is seamlessly combined into the narrative.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 19, 2022

The 13 lives the title references might as well be sacks of flour, for all the film cares about developing them.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Oct 10, 2022