The Rescue, a new documentary streaming on Disney+, is an edge-of-your seat movie that shows the generosity of the human spirit and the challenges overcome with human ingenuity.

The film starts out with the setting: Thailand, a group of boys and their coach go missing in an extensive cave system in June, 2018, just before Monsoon Season hits the region.  The cave has flooded unexpectedly, and the Thai rescuers soon realize they need help from people with a finite set of skills to find and (hopefully) bring the boys out alive. What follows is the discovery that they are, in fact, still alive, they are a mile and half back through a maze of flooded chambers, and their oxygen levels are running low.  As the days pass into weeks, time is running out to save them!

Here in the story, we meet a set of gentlemen from different corners of the world: England, Australia, Scotland, Ireland, the USA, Belgium, and of course, Thailand. These men are experts in their own sport: cave diving. They are not necessarily the elite athletes that we would stereotypically recognize; in fact, many of them are retired, middle-aged white dudes, who happen to enjoy the thrill and challenge of diving in underwater caves.

For close to two hours, the attempts to extract the boys, the meager odds that they will be successful, and the unorthodox (and at times seemingly unethical) manner in which the kids are rescued will have you in a nail-biting state.

Overall, I give this documentary a 5/5. The cinematography, the real-life footage, the interviews, and the pace of the film are all exceptional.  The film comes from the same producers who brought us Free Solo, so the bar was already high, and the expectation has been met.  If you like true drama, extreme sports, and nail-biting odds of failure, this movie delivers all.