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The 33 | 2015 | PG-13 | - 2.4.4

Based on real events: In 2010 a coal mining disaster in Chile trapped 33 men underground for 69 days. While their families campaigned for their rescue and camped in a nearby tent city, the miners' chosen leader (Antonio Banderas) encouraged them to stop fighting and ration supplies until their long-awaited rescue. Also with Rodrigo Santoro, Cote de Pablo, Lou Diamond Phillips, Jacob Vargas, Gabriel Byrne, Juliette Binoche, James Brolin and Martin Sheen. Directed by Patricia Riggen. Some dialogue is in Spanish, French and Middle Eastern languages with English subtitles. [2:00]

SEX/NUDITY 2 - A wife kisses her husband on the cheek. A man on a bus blows a kiss to a man walking along the road. A man and a woman outside a mine hug and kiss for several seconds. Several other couples hug for a prolonged period.
 A clothed woman is shown with a swollen belly, we hear that she is pregnant and we see a sonogram briefly; in a scene later she bends over in pain, groans, and grimaces, presumably in labor, refuses to go to the hospital and is later shown carrying her baby wrapped in a large blanket.
 A man hugs his wife from behind and says, "You have the best bottom." A man teases another man saying, "Hey, at least you could close the curtains at home." A man threads electrical wire into a hole in the rounded end of a metal tube in his hand, looks at his friends, and they all laugh, because the tube looks phallic. As materials are lowered into a mine bore hole for trapped men, one man calls out, "Hey, here are your dirty magazines" (we cannot see them; they are rolled up tightly).
 A miner has a wife and a girlfriend who both see him off on his bus; the girlfriend wears a top that reveals some cleavage and shorts that reveal bare legs to middle thighs. A woman pulls down the slacks of another woman and we see her rear end covered by opaque panty hose. Several men appear shirtless in a dozen scenes revealing bare chests, abdomens, navels, backs, arms and shoulders; as they run out of food after a mine cave-in, they become thinner and their ribs show. A few scenes show women wearing V-necked blouses that reveal some cleavage. A teen girl wears an off-shoulder shirt that reveals a bra strap. A scene featuring a mirage-like vision in a mine shows four women wearing dresses that reveal moderate cleavage and each woman kisses her husband on the cheek.

VIOLENCE/GORE 4 - Dark mine tunnels feature only a few fluorescent lights; the tunnels, machinery, tools, and miners are all dusty and grimy and machinery and jackhammers are loud in a few scenes. A large crack in a mountain wall in a mine is over a foot wide in the middle.
 Rumbling begins inside a mine deep under a mountain and large rocks fall from the ceiling; a man falls over a cliff, screaming and another man grabs his arm, hauls him back up and the two men run with other men, all shouting and climb onto a crew truck to exit the mine; earthquake like rumblings shake tools on a wall, lights short out and we see sparks and darkness as a loud cave-in closes off a tunnel with rocks and dirt, dust flying and causing men to cough.
 A man falls off a crew truck, another man shouts at him to run, and he runs from falling rocks and climbs back onto the moving truck. A truck driving deep into a mine passes another truck and smashes its front end on a slab of stone, but no one is injured and a cave-in closes off the tunnel in front of the first truck, trapping the crew. A powerful, loud explosion rocks a tunnel and equipment and a truck is thrown sideways toward the camera, and then the screen goes black. Two miners climb a ladder in high heat, panting and groaning, into a chimney, which is a mine air vent; they become angry when they find that the ladder extends only a few yards high and they cannot climb out to safety and one man beats his helmeted head on the wall in frustration before a cave-in dumps rocks and dirt into the chimney just as the men leave it, shouting.
 A miner inside a rescue capsule is hooked up to biometrics that show a highly increased heart rate as he gasps and pants inside the capsule; the narrow capsule becomes stuck and he yells for help, but the capsule is loosened and brings him and the other trapped men up safely, one by one.
 After a cave-in, a miner comes to and lights his helmet, showing blood on his face and we see a few other men with bloody faces and one with a particularly bloody mouth and teeth when other miners pull him from under a truck; men turn on helmet lights and see a slab of stone that we hear it is twice the mass of the Empire State Building, blocking the only road out of the mine. We see an elderly miner lying on a gurney and malnourished (he survives).
 A drill bit breaks through a safe-room wall in a caved-in mine and a man screams for others to wake up; the men beat on the drill bit with pipes to let people up top know they are alive and they spray-paint the drill bit red; crowds of families and reporters outside cheer loudly. Trapped men detonate a controlled explosion to open an area for a larger drill bit to enter; we hear a bang and see some smoke and dirt roll through a tunnel as a large drill bit comes through the ceiling.
 A caption states that 12,000 people lose their lives in mining accidents annually. A memorial of candles and holy relics is seen near a mine entrance for a miner who died while working in the mine. A caption states that the miners work in 100F degree heat at 1,700 feet, 2,300 feet, and farther below the surface. A mining engineer above ground states that the trapped miners may have silicosis from the dust.
 A miner turns and shouts, cursing in fear, because he sees another man with a knife in the dim light (no conflict occurs). Trapped miners scuffle and one man puts a knife to another man's throat over an iPod until their leader takes away the knife and throws the iPod against a wall. Miners accuse their leader of making a lucrative book deal, so he stalks off to another tunnel to sleep.
 Engineers and government workers argue loudly about their plans for drilling into a safe-room after a mine cave-in; the drills keep missing the room and the trapped miners hear it go by them and an engineer says the men will be dead when they reach them. Two miners meet other trapped men in a safe-room where they find that the telephone call box is only a box of unconnected wires with no line to connect them to, and the first aid medicine cabinet is empty.
 Wives and other family members of trapped miners crowd around a chain link fence at a mine and demand a rescue team for the men after a cave-in; one of three armed guards in Kevlar vests tells them to back off, fires a handgun into the air and a woman hits him in the shoulder with a rock as the crowd shouts and bangs on the fence. A woman argues with Chile's Minister of Mines and slaps him in the face and a crowd shouts and chants angrily. A miner in a cave-in knocks down another miner and a third miner intervenes; the second miner had stolen some food and the third miner slaps him for doing so, saying, "We are buried alive," then goes on to explain rationing. A man says that one trapped miner has depression and another is bi-polar, so the men will kill each other if they are not soon rescued. A miner stands at a cliff edge, his face scratched and tear streaked, ready to jump, but another miner grabs his wrist and convinces him not to jump. A supervisor and a miner shout at each other loudly. Two women push each other several times in a brief confrontation over a man (one woman is his wife and the other is his girlfriend). A supervisor argues with the mine manager about not having better safety measures in place for the miners. A trapped miner throws his retirement papers onto a table and shouts, "I quit!" The President of Chile tells a cabinet member that a mining disaster may result in lawsuits and even criminal charges. A man says that he has been mad at his sister all his life, because she raised their five siblings after their parents died, but left him, the youngest, alone. A mine supervisor speaks into a laptop, telling engineers above ground, "We're all ready to get out of here or die trying."
 A man looks at a tent city at night and becomes tearful. A woman inside a tent city sings about giving thanks for her husband, who is trapped in a mine. A procession of families in the tent city march with banners and crosses to pray for trapped miners.
 Many yards away from a desert mine entrance, a huge cloud of dust spews after a cave-in and climbs higher into the air throughout an entire day. Two men drive into a mine tunnel and find a large slab of rock sinking.
 Miners make soup from a can of tuna and industrial water that contains some motor oil that could not be filtered and each man drinks some from a cup; the men hallucinate about food at a large banquet served by their wives and mothers with symphonic music playing in the background and they imagine an empanada a foot square, a huge plate of pasta and sauce, a large bowl of stew, a hamburger the size of a platter, a cow and a big bucket of milk, and a huge bowl of fruit.
 A new miner gags and moans while riding on a crew truck with other workers miles underground, but he does not vomit. A nauseated man spits saliva and vomit onto the floor after a cave-in. A heavy drinker trapped in a cave-in experiences symptoms of withdrawal, convulsing, screaming about insects crawling on him and crying until an older miner calms him and prays with him. Men sleep fitfully inside a cave-in mine. A man coughs, another man gags (no vomit), a third man cares for an old man who is feeling unwell, and another man eats a candle. Two men seem to urinate on a mine wall, but we do not see or hear urination; with their backs to us, they bend and straighten their knees, making an arm motion as if zipping a fly. A man tells another man that he flatulates in his sleep and has bad breath. A miner jokes that they can always eat the Bolivian, because Bolivians taste like chicken. A Bolivian man says with a smile, "They say Chileans taste like chicken."

LANGUAGE 4 - 8 scatological terms, 2 anatomical terms, 4 mild obscenities (hell, damn, bitch, huervones [bastards]), name-calling (crazy, whore, thieves, liar, Bolivian, thieving), exclamations (shut-up), 1 religious profanity (GD), 11 religious exclamations (God Bless, Pray To God, Oh My God, Oh God, My God, Our Father, Jesus Christ, God Was With Us).

SUBSTANCE USE - Many men and women and teenagers toast the retirement of one of the male attendees with tumblers containing a few inches of amber liquid and they drink from their glasses, a man drinks from a pint bottle of clear liquor on a bench and on a bus as well as on a truck driving down a road in a mine and in a room in the mine, a man throws an empty bottle of liquor against a wall and breaks it, and a shaman blesses an engineer by sprinkling a clear liquor around him on the ground and wafting incense around his upper body.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Mining, Chilean mining industry, workplace safety, danger, government responsibility in disasters, determination, courage, sacrifice, cooperation, leadership, honesty, communication, relationships, families, love, faith, loss, guilt, remorse, forgiveness, reconciliation, renewal.

MESSAGE - The survival of the 33 Chilean miners is an example to the world of humanity's capacity for caring and cooperation.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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