The movie shines as it showcases Sugerman and Cruz’s developing relationship - the two rely on each other, and Hustle delivers a must-have for most sports movies with a terrific training montage sequence, featuring Sugerman repeatedly chasing Cruz up a hill with a car. That prospect is Bo Cruz (played by real-life NBA player Juancho Hernangómez), who Sugerman spots dominating a local pickup game in Spain. But when tragedy gets in the way of Stanley’s new job, he has to prove himself yet again and find a winning prospect for the team. The owner promotes Sugerman to assistant coach, a position where he can spend more time around his wife (Queen Latifah) and their young daughter. He has a close relationship with the team’s owner (Robert Duvall), a father-like figure to Sugerman who sees Stanley’s value as a basketball mind. Sandler is Stanley Sugerman, a former college star who is now a veteran NBA scout for the Philadelphia 76ers. NopeĪ love letter to the sport of basketball and one of the better sports movies released in years, Hustle is a terrific display for Adam Sandler’s talents and his love for the sport. Thirteen Lives is available to watch on Prime Video. The diving scenes are electric and incredibly tense, too - Howard and the crew built a gigantic set to replicate the caves, and Mortensen and Farrell shot their own diving sequences. The heroics of the divers wouldn’t have been possible without the efforts of local villagers and other volunteers from around the world, and the movie does not forget it.
Instead, the movie effectively showcases how this was a group effort by volunteers from around the world. It’s also one that’s quite impossible for him to overdramatize, because of how unbelievable the true story is.Īn old-school tense, edge-of-your-seat thriller, Thirteen Lives avoids the pitfall of similar Hollywood adaptations by not locating the story as a journey of a singular group of outsider heroes (in this cave, the eccentric specialty cave divers portrayed by Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell). Ron Howard is a deeply sentimental filmmaker who loves inspirational stories - Apollo 13, Cinderella Man, and his excellent sports drama Rush, for instance - and there are few more inspirational stories in recent memory than this one. Thirteen Lives, the adaptation of the true story of the 2018 Thai cave rescue, is a perfect match of director and material.