THE film Thirteen Lives (Cert. 12A) reminded me of Tommy Cooper. Giggling part-way through a joke, he gasped: “I can’t help laughing. I know what’s coming next.” Based on a widely reported news item, the challenge is to deliver more than replication (spoiler alert) of a joyful outcome. We already know what happened; so the emphasis needs shifting to how and at what emotional cost.

The director Ron Howard, no stranger to dramatising a real-life survival event, as in Apollo 13 (1995), is less successful here. In June 2018, 12 Wild Boars junior footballers and their coach visit the Tham Luang Nang Non Cave. They are trapped by floodwater. Thailand’s naval-operations force supply divers, but, thwarted by the dangerous conditions, accept the help of other experienced rescuers, including Rick Stanton (Viggo Mortensen) and John Volanthen (Colin Farrell).

There follows much effort in making contact with the party. When it is finally achieved, the rescuers discover that the children, despite many traumatic days, are in good spirits. They help each other, they explain. They stay strong because their coach teaches them to meditate.

The spiritual element in the screenplay shouldn’t surprise us, given that it is by the Roman Catholic author William Nicholson. His numerous works include Shadowlands — C. S. Lewis’s struggle with faith as his wife dies of cancer. Recently, he scripted Hope Gap (Arts, 9 October 2020), with its suggestion that God’s grace impels us not to look back. There is a touch of Orpheus in needing only to move forward if disaster is to be averted.

Nicholson’s screenplay juxtaposes soft-hearted John’s persistent optimism with Rick’s reflective pessimism that it has never been done before. The impasse is broken by enlisting the anaesthesiologist and diver Harry Harris (Joel Edgerton) to sedate each individual before escorting them through a baptism-like ordeal.

One might have expected the film to examine the story’s emotional and spiritual dimensions more closely. Howard has done so before, namely in The Da Vinci Code (2006) and its sequels. Coupled with Nicholson, they really could have (forgive the pun) plumbed the depths. We ascertain very little of the team members’ states of mind or how meditation assisted their drawn-out days.

The point of view is almost entirely that of white males coming to the assistance of a developing nation. In reality, more than 5000 volunteers from 17 countries contributed to saving the group. John, Rick, et al. agonise over the team’s plight with sketchy back stories about their daily lives. The movie merely fictionalises what the National Geographic’s 2021 documentary The Rescuers had already detailed, but with scant addition.

For instance, when we are shown the Shrine of the Sleeping Princess at the entrance of the cave, there isn’t any substantial exploration of how predominantly Buddhist onlookers perceive its significance. We only subsequently and briefly learn that prayers are being offered to this guardian spirit as apology for any offence the boys have committed. A token blessed by a holy man is forced into the hands of a sceptical Rick. At the end of the film, he may or may not be left pondering how efficacious it was. So there are no Buddhist great awakenings, then. This is more like The Great Escape (1963), but with a Tommy Cooper happy ending.

In cinemas and for digital download.