A wonderful tribute so some incredibly brave and innovative heros and a tale of great survival in the face of near certain death 13 lives tows the line well between being an entertaining action thriller and an honest depiction of sensational events. Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell both play their roles of expert British cave divers with a suprising amount of honesty and restraint which allows Howard's direction and the story of the Thai Navy Seals involvement to have its time in the spotlight but it is hard to overcome a feeling that the movie feels a little whitewashed focusing most of its energy on the two white characters in an otherwise entirely Thai rescue effort. The film does drag a little due to its runtime and the cave diving sequences despite being very tense and dramatic do feel a little repetative when the dive is repeated multiple times.