One of the toughest challenges for a filmmaker is to take a story to which everyone knows the ending (or at least ought to know the ending) and retell it in a way that puts the outcome in doubt again. Steven Spielberg accomplishes this in this year’s fact-based Cold War tale “Bridge of Spies,” and now Mexican director Patricia Riggen does something not dissimilar with a fact-based story of more recent vintage.The 33 2015 Movie Download.
“The 33” is a technically impressive simulation of the mine collapse and rescue in Chile in 2010, a cataclysmic event that saw 33 miners trapped underground for a stupefying-seeming 69 days. Their plight became an international cause during that period, and their incredibly improbable rescue was a “whole world is watching” moment on a par with the first moon landing. The movie throws together an international cast that may on first glance strike the movie-savvy viewer as improbable as well: while the English-language production features Antonio Banderas and Lou Diamond Phillips, two actors with obvious Latino bonafides in several departments, in key leading roles, it also has French actor Juliette Binoche and Irish actor Gabriel Byrne in prominent parts, both playing Chileans. It’s a testament to director Riggen’s skill with actors that she makes the ensemble a seamless one. Unless your objections to casting against conventional type are violent ones, there shouldn’t be a problem.
A slight problem comes up at the movie’s opening, as the chief characters are introduced in a party scene. One is an elderly miner who’s retiring; another is an experienced fellow who’s asking his buddy and foreman for an extra shift on a day he’s supposed to have off; another is a younger miner who’s about to become a father and who’s looking into getting out of the mining biz as a result.