There isn’t any doubt that mining is dangerous work. Compound that with the safety record prevalent in foreign countries and luck is what keeps many of these men alive from day to day.
So it is in this story of a Chilean mine disaster that nearly claimed the lives of 33 miners near the tail end of 2010.
And therein lies the story of this little docu-drama featuring Antonio Banderas as a courageous miner who holds the group together as they await rescue nearly 200 stories beneath the ground after a massive rock shifts and traps them under the surface for over two months.
If you already know the story, there are really no surprises here. It’s a dramatized retelling of a tale that the media covered for weeks on the second to last page of every major newspaper in the country.
What makes the movie compelling, though, is the interactions of the trapped miners and the confrontations that arise on the surface as the bureaucrats try to figure out how best to find the missing men.
Banderas, for instance, isn’t content to sit around and wait to be rescued. He makes a move to head for the surface only to find out that the company never completed an emergency egress which forces him to return to the other miners who have holed up in a refuge where they less than patiently have gathered.
The refuge has enough food to last 30 miners for three days. The rescue, however, is likely to take far longer. Several of the impatient men have started to consume the rations at an unsustainable pace.
Banderas takes charge and disseminates the rations in much smaller portions knowing fully well that their only hope for survival is to stretch supplies as long as possible.
Unfortunately even that may not be enough. Tensions abound below the surface and top side as a presidential aide, played by Rodrigo Santoro, attempts to calm the families of the trapped miners, assuring them that everything that can be done is being done.
Melodrama abounds in the story with a lot of the usual tearful moments intermixed with some that are, I gather, ones that are designed to be comedic.
Actress Cote de Pablo (recognizable to fans of the TV drama NCIS) plays a pregnant wife awaiting the return of her husband to see if the child is a boy or a girl.
Meanwhile another miner’s wife battles it out with his mistress to see which of the two has the right to stay and see if he survives.
Lou Diamond Phillips plays the mine foreman who warns the site manager that there are risks of collapse, pleas that fall on deaf ears in lieu of increased quotas for greater quantities of mineral resources.
Bob Gunton and James Brolin each have extended cameos, the former playing the President of Chile and the latter an American engineer with a plan for how to rescue the trapped men.
This film is also one of the last movies scored by legendary composer James Horner who was killed in a plane crash earlier this year.
There is nothing particularly outstanding here in this movie aside from the acting and the melodramatic situations but it does make for a nice diversion from shopping for a couple of hours spent at the mall on an afternoon leading up to the holidays.
The only thing I’ll say is that I doubt I’ll take up mining any time in the near future. I give “The 33” 3.5 out of 5 stars.
