The 33

Buried alive: Being aware in your tomb is a nightmare. Thirty-three miners in Chile experienced this doom when a gold and copper mine collapsed on top of them. The film is blunt—the usual procedure in such cases was to wait a few days, close the mine, and put tombstones on top. The miners could only wait to become corpses.

The 33 (rated PG-13) tells a story many of us saw on television in 2010: the attempt to find and rescue the men buried alive for over 60 days. Because the story was so recent, most grown-ups seeing the movie will know the outcome; but the journey is interesting. The miners must survive physical torment, but the greatest danger to them is psychological. They have no good reason to hope.

The leader of the miners, played ably by an ageless Antonio Banderas, keeps them going. Meanwhile the families up top try to force the mine company and the government to do something. Juliette Binoche is a sister of one of the miners who has little hope, but the will to keep the pressure on to act.

This is a movie about burial and the hope for resurrection, yet it spends too much time getting to the payoff. The first half of the film, where the miners do not know if anyone is coming and the people up top do not know if anyone is alive, is very powerful. The men are flawed, but suffering redeems them. They are saved, in part, by forming an unbreakable community of hope.

Once the miners are contacted and the world tunes in to see if rescuers can extract them from the mine, the film drags. Easter is coming, the audience knows it, but we get stuck in Saturday—a bit buried until the satisfying conclusion revives. This is a film that should have been 33 minutes shorter.

The 33 features the music of James Horner (with support from J.A.C. Redford), and it is the best part of this solid film. Horner died before the film could be released. Buy the score even if you do not see the movie.