Three stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.13.15
The 2010 Copiapó mining accident,
which trapped 33 men 2,300 feet underground after a catastrophic collapse within the
121-year-old copper-gold mine, is the stuff of legend: a tribute to heroism and
indomitable human spirit, and a reminder that we are, indeed, capable of
selflessly pulling together at times of extreme crisis.
It’s an incredible story, both in
terms of what the men endured throughout their 69 days of captivity, and
because of what took place on the surface, during what blossomed into an
unprecedented world-wide effort to save them.
Sadly, director Patricia Riggen
and her four (!) screenwriters fail to capture much of that drama in their
oddly uninvolving film. Although their adaptation is based on Deep Down Dark — the best-selling account of the ordeal by Héctor Tobar, the only journalist
granted access to the men and their families — this film is oddly shallow.
Despite a 127-minute running
time, and some strong actors, we learn very little about most of these people;
similarly, key details involving the above-ground rescue efforts are glossed
over or omitted entirely.
Mostly, though, the film’s often
larkish tone is simply wrong. Granted, tension can be maximized by occasional
dollops of levity, but that’s a delicate balance, and Riggen makes hash of that
recipe. Matters aren’t helped by an overly cheerful score from the late James
Horner: a series of frivolous melodies that sound like the sort of hackneyed
stuff that accompanied “south of the border sequences” in 1960s TV shows.
As the final score Horner
completed before his untimely death in June, it’s an unfortunate postscript to
an otherwise exemplary cinema legacy: This music too often trivializes these
events.
We meet some of the primary
characters during a typically jovial gathering, most of the miners and their
families having bonded through their shared knowledge of this dangerous work.
Mario Sepúlveda (Antonio Banderas) is the respected family man, with a doting
wife and teenage daughter; Álex Vega (Mario Casas), a skilled young mechanic,
chooses to work the mine because the pay is better, and thus offers greater
promise to the life he wishes to build with his pregnant wife, Jessica (Cote de
Pablo).
Luis “Don Lucho” Urzua (Lou
Diamond Phillips), the shift supervisor, has long waged bitter arguments with
mining company managers who ignore mounting evidence of the mine’s growing
instability. Edison Peña (Jacob Vargas) is the token goofball and wannabe Elvis
impersonator; Yonni Barrios (Oscar Nuñez) blatantly juggles a wife (Adrianna
Barazza) and mistress (Elizabeth de Rasso) who live within shouting distance of
each other.
Dario Segovia (Juan Pablo Raba),
a hopeless alcoholic, has estranged himself from the sister (Juliette Binoche,
as María) who nonetheless looks after him; Mario Gomez (Gustavo Angarita), the
eldest in the group, looks forward to his retirement.
Carlos Mamani (Tenoch Huerta) endures
constant harassment — some of it decidedly racist — because, as a Bolivian,
he’s the only man who isn’t Chilean. Ironic, then, that he’s one of the few
characters granted enough depth, and screen time, to become a distinct
individual.
That’s eight men out of 33, only
four of whom — Mario, Don Lucho, Alex and Carlos — dominate the events
underground. The rest remain nameless and mostly faceless: part of the
indistinguishable crowd that grumbles as a group, with one man or another
occasionally involved in a squabble brought on by strain and desperation.
Instead, Riggen and her scripters
devote an excessive amount of time to Laurence Golborne (Rodrigo Santoro),
Chile’s newly appointed minister of mining, who seizes this catastrophe as a
means of proving, to distrustful citizens, that the government does care about
them. Suggestions of a budding romance between Laurence and María are bizarrely
out of place: a total Hollywood-style contrivance.
Many previous films have done a
far better job of depicting people trapped by claustrophobic circumstances
almost certain to prove fatal, from The Flight of the Phoenix and The
Poseidon Adventure to more serious studies such as Das Boot.
Riggen, best known for
light-hearted family fare and one modest drama — 2007’s Under the Same Moon —
simply lacks the skills for so ambitious a project. In her hands, these
characters are reduced to one-dimensional stereotypes: Mario shouts a lot and
makes let’s-pull-together speeches; Don Lucho frets over not having been more insistent
about the mine’s instability; Dario suffers withdrawal.
The most successfully sobering
moments come from the situation, rather than its victims: most notably each
time we watch Mario carefully ration their meager food supplies — mostly
cookies and cans of tuna — as the days stretch on, following the initial mine
collapse. All too soon, Mario is dividing a single can of tuna once per day,
carefully dumping small spoonfuls into 33 plastic cups.
These moments are powerful,
mostly because Riggen plays them silently, the men eschewing the overly
melodramatic dialog too frequently supplied at other times.
On the other hand, I’ve no idea
what to make of the film’s jump-the-shark moment: a shared hallucination during
which the trapped men imagine their various loved ones serving a huge banquet,
in a tableau oddly akin to the Last Supper. It’s flat-out weird, and it brings
the film to a grinding halt.
Events topside are similarly
unbalanced. On the one hand, we get a strong sense of village unity, as the families
— led by María and Jessica — establish a de facto community, dubbed Camp
Esperanza (Hope), facing the guarded mining company fence. These scenes are
genuinely touching, although more in the sense of abstract spirit; once again,
we don’t learn much about any of the other women.
Laurence, meanwhile, locks horns
with Andre Sougarret (Gabriel Byrne), the chief engineer brought in to find a
way of determining whether the men below are even alive, let alone rescue-able.
Byrne is quite persuasive in this role, particularly when Sougarret explains
the difficulties — most damningly, drill “drift” — that jeopardize any effort
to reach the classroom-size “Refuge” where it is assumed the men have gathered,
if possible.
Bob Gunton is appropriately
officious as Chile’s President Sebastian Piñera, who initially frets over the
notion of snatching responsibility for the rescue effort, from the feckless
mining company. Later, as the world press descends, Piñera worries more about
his political standing, should it become necessary — as becomes more likely,
day by day — to suspend the entire operation.
It should be mentioned that Chile
still was recovering from the 8.8-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami
the country had endured only six months earlier: a detail that would go a long
way toward explaining Piñera’s behavior, and the civilian attitude ... and yet
a detail completely ignored by this film.
And then — suddenly — three
international drilling teams arrive on site, from Canada, South Africa (using
an Australian borer) and the United States: a development that occurs as if by
magic, with no explanation. Only the American effort is granted a face: James
Brolin, in a cameo as Jeff Hart, the Denver-based drilling engineer who
abandons operations at U.S. Army bases in Afghanistan, to take charge in Chile.
That’s a pretty big deal, and the
real-life Hart deserves far better than the short shrift he gets here.
The same could be said for all
the other actual people depicted so insubstantially. Indeed, the film’s most
powerful moment comes at the very end, during a black-and-white montage that
shows the actual 33 miners today, still together, enjoying a well-deserved
moment of shared glory on a quiet beach.
I’d argue, however, that this
poignant scene is insufficient reward for the disappointing drama that precedes
it.
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