The 33 starts off like an old fashioned disaster movie – in the scenes introducing a group of miners there’s an old guy who is about to retire, a young man with a newly pregnant wife who wants him to get another job, a foreman concerned about the safety of the pit and a boss who is only interested in profits.
Normally, I’d be thinking about which ones would die and in what order, but as this is based on the well-known story of the trapped Chilean miners, I already knew that they all survived. So, that made the set up of the film a little incongruous, and lessened the tension as the days trapped ticked by. That lack of suspense is the main problem of the film, along with the strange casting of the French actress as one of the Chilean women waiting for the rescue. She’s normally great – and other parts are played by non Chileans to decent effect – but she just doesn’t work at all in that role.
However, there are plenty of other films that I like that are based on well-known true stories, so that doesn’t necessarily make this a waste of time. There are a couple of very good performances from Antonio Banderas as the miner who takes charge of the group and Rodrigo Santoro as the mining minister who is trying to find a way to free the men. Also, the ending where each of the men is reunited with their loved ones is affecting.
All in all, a decent effort.
Rating: 6 out of 10