In the summer of 2018, the perilous mission to free 12 junior footballers and their coach from a flooded cave system in Thailand dominated the global headlines. As reports about the precarious situation the boys found themselves in grew steadily more alarming, thousands of volunteers became involved in the increasingly desperate rescue effort – as worried onlookers around the world crossed everything in the hope an unlikely solution could be found.

The incredible story received so much coverage that a film adaptation came to feel like something of an inevitability – and indeed now it has arrived in the shape of Thirteen Lives, which comes to select cineams on Friday 29th July, before arriving on Prime Video a week later. Following on from Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi‘s captivating, BAFTA-nominated documentary The Rescue, the new film sees veteran director Ron Howard mount a gripping dramatisation of the story, complete with an A-list Hollywood cast that includes Colin Farrell, Viggo Mortensen and Joel Edgerton.

Opening with a largely Thai-language sequence that sees the boys enjoy a worry-free game of football before they go exploring, the film goes on to cover the story in its entirety – from the initial incident that saw the team trapped, right through to the hazardous mission to get them out. Along the way, we’re frequently reminded just how against the odds a potential escape was, while we also see the effect the incident had on the local community – with many turning to prayer in an attempt to boost the chances of survival.

The difficulty with films like these based on inspirational true stories is that they can sometimes end up feeling a little mawkish and cloying, with screenwriters and directors over-sentimentalising – and in some cases over–glamourising – the true stories in an effort to create a Hollywood-ised version of events. But Thirteen Lives admirably avoids this pitfall; it’s a nicely restrained film that pretty much stays faithful to the events as they happened, even if some of those events seem too far-fetched to be believed.

While Howard himself can take a good deal of the credit for that, the rather understated performances from the cast are also essential in keeping the film grounded. In the lead roles, Farrell and Mortensen are superb as John Volanthen and Rick Stanton – the unassuming British cave divers whose courageous exploits helped prevent tragedy. Both actors brilliantly get across the everyman qualities of these unlikely heroes, neither of whom was used to the world’s attention. The dynamic between the pair is very convincing, with Volanthen presented as the more optimistic foil to the slightly grouchy Stanton.