ViewGuide

Created Nov 25, 2015 02:27AM PST • Edited Apr 30, 2016 10:56AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Real-life drama ripped from TV news gets no more riveting or charming than in The 33, about the Chilean miners trapped half a mile below ground five years ago. Some three billion people followed their drama in 2010, including me and probably you. The fact that all 33 were safely brought to the surface in a NASA designed capsule doesn’t dim the drama of this fascinating and engaging English-language production.

   It’s kind of an Apollo 13 true story movie. Failure is not an option, albeit The 33 is set 200 stories underground, not hundreds of thousands of miles into space. Both tell inspiring true tales of engineering teamwork saving lives, a valuable tonic when most movies tell tall tales about lone-wolf heroes.

   A star-studded cast led by Antonio Banderas never dips into the maudlin, notwithstanding a well-wrought dream sequence. The 33 now joins NO as another great real-life movie about recent Chilean history. Unlike the Spanish-language NO, The 33 is in Spanish-accented English, making it easily consumable El Norte.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Antonio Banderas & Lou Diamond Phillips lead the cast as “Super Mario” & his crew chief. Banderas has always been a great actor, not just a great looking one; still is, here a family-man in a death-defying crisis. LDP has put on a lot of miles since playing Richie Valens in La Bamba, now respectably middle-aged.

   Rodrigo Santoro, from Brazil, handsomely plays real-life Chilean Secretary of Mining Laurence Golborne, humanized by a tart Juliette Binoche as a resolute sister of an alcoholic miner.

   • Bob Gunton speaks with a Spanish accent as real-life Chilean President Sebastián Piñera.
   • Gabriel Byrne delivers well as the mining expert President Piñera sends in to rescue the situation.
   • James Brolin cameos as the American mining expert who delivers the successful end-game.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    The 33 surmounts the well-known true story challenges with deft humor and a touch of dreaminess.

11. Direction Great 4.0

    Patricia Riggen ably directs this story of men, a distinct credit for a female director of movies about women. Nonetheless, her feminine touch is evident in The 33, as the sisters, wives, daughters, girlfriends and mistresses of the miners all get significant and well-wrought treatment.

12. Play Great 4.0

    Mikko Alanne, Craig Borten and Michael Thomas wrote the screenplay from Jose Rivera’s screen story, taken from Hector Tobar’s book Deep Down Dark.

    • Borten also wrote the excellent Dallas Buyers Club.
    • Thomas also wrote the excellent Devil’s Double.
    • Rivera wrote the great screenplay for On The Road.

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5

    The awesome depths of the mine and stupefying mass of its collapse are well visualized.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.9

17. Sex Innocent 1.5

18. Violence Brutal 2.6

19. Rudeness Salty 1.6

21. Reality

    Glib 1.1

    How real is it? Pretty damn real. I’m goosing the CircoReality score 30% above purely natural to account for some dramatic license. The nearby newsreel contains details at odds with the movie, proving the point.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.3

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0