The 33

In 2010, I remember the entire world stopping to stare at a small hole in the Chilean desert. It was one of those rare moments of global synchronization—like the moon landing, but with more dirt and better sweaters. We all watched as 33 men were pulled from the Earth like a miracle birth after 69 days of darkness. It was a story tailor-made for the big screen. Yet, when The 33 actually hit theaters five years later, it didn’t just underperform; it effectively vanished. It’s a strange specimen of contemporary cinema: a big-budget, star-studded survival epic that has the cultural footprint of a wet napkin.

I watched this recently on a Tuesday night while trying to ignore the fact that I’d forgotten to take the trash out, and the faint smell of old cabbage in my kitchen really helped simulate the "stuffy, trapped in a mine" atmosphere better than any 4D theater experience could.

The Hollywood-ification of Disaster

The biggest hurdle The 33 faces is the sheer "Hollywoodness" of its assembly. You’ve got Antonio Banderas leading the charge as Mario Sepúlveda, the group’s de facto leader. Banderas is, as always, charismatic enough to power a small city, but he carries a certain "movie star" sheen that feels at odds with the grit of a copper mine. Then there’s Juliette Binoche—one of the most celebrated French actresses in history—playing a Chilean street-food vendor.

It’s the kind of casting that felt slightly dated even in 2015. We were entering an era where audiences were starting to demand more authentic representation, and seeing a European ensemble play South American laborers felt like a throwback to a 1990s studio mandate. Lou Diamond Phillips actually fares the best here as "Don Lucho," the shift foreman who carries the crushing weight of guilt for the mine’s safety failures. He brings a quiet, trembling humanity that avoids the scenery-chewing traps the rest of the script sets. It’s a movie that feels like it was cast by throwing darts at a 1994 Golden Globes seating chart.

Buried Under the Star Wars Shadow

Why did this movie disappear? For starters, it was released in November 2015, mere weeks before Star Wars: The Force Awakens sucked all the oxygen out of the atmosphere. But beyond bad timing, The 33 suffered from a "CNN-fatigue" problem. We had all seen the real rescue live on television. We knew the ending. To make a movie like this work, you need to provide something the news cameras didn't—deep, psychological insight or a unique visual language.

Director Patricia Riggen does a fantastic job with the initial collapse. It is a terrifying sequence of falling stone and screeching metal that makes you want to crawl under your coffee table. But once the dust settles, the movie struggles to manage its massive ensemble. There are 33 miners, plus their families above ground, plus the government officials trying to save them. By trying to cover everyone, the film ends up skimming the surface of everyone. The emotional stakes are spread so thin they’re basically transparent.

Turns out, the production was almost as grueling as the story. They filmed in two actual mines in Colombia and Chile, and the cast reportedly dealt with genuine respiratory issues from the dust. Apparently, Antonio Banderas even mentioned that they were all constantly covered in a "fine gray powder" that wouldn't come off for weeks. You can see that physical toll on the screen, which adds a layer of reality that the script occasionally lacks.

The Final Note of a Legend

One reason to seek this out—even if you aren't a fan of survival dramas—is the music. This was the final score completed by James Horner before his tragic death in a plane crash. Horner, the man who gave us the sounds of Titanic and Braveheart, brings a haunting, ethereal quality to the film. Instead of leaning into bombastic "hero" themes, he uses Andean flutes and delicate vocals that remind you this is a story about the fragile human spirit, not just a technical rescue. It’s a beautiful swan song that probably deserved a more memorable movie to house it.

In the end, The 33 is a "middle-of-the-road" drama that arrived just as the "middle" was disappearing from theaters. In 2024, this would be a four-part Netflix limited series with a much deeper dive into the politics of Chilean mining. As a two-hour movie, it’s a perfectly functional, occasionally moving tribute to a miracle, but it’s easy to see why it got left in the dark.

The film is a sturdy enough piece of craft that honors the real-life miners without ever quite figuring out how to be a "great movie" on its own merits. It’s worth a watch for the sheer spectacle of the collapse and for Horner’s haunting final melodies. Just don’t expect it to stay with you much longer than the time it takes for the credits to roll. It’s a polite, professional dramatization of a story that was, in reality, much messier and more miraculous than Hollywood knew how to handle.