The 33

The rescue of 33 Chilean miners trapped for 69 days under the unforgiving Atacama desert was a comprehensively modern tale of human triumph.

We all watched and shared in the euphoria. It was a survival story phenomenon for the 21st century and we connected to it in whichever way we wanted. One billion of us were captivated as each of the 33 emerged clinging for literal dear life to a drill hoisting them painstakingly back up to their families' ecstatic relief, the world's rapture, and global headlines – notably in The Sun's 'Freed hot chile fellas'.

We consumed round-the-clock news, ‘liked’ updates on social media and gawped as girlfriends and mistresses fought over shared lovers.

Oddly, it's in such machinations of a feeding-time-at-bird-world media circus that The 33 resonates with truth, humour and emotion. And it helps that the truth is up there on the big screen.

Filmed with the cooperation of the miners themselves, their families and rescuers, the producers ensured an unquestionable level of authenticity by shooting on location in the bone dry, almost faux-lunar landscapes of the Atacama desert. This explains why that potentially trickier detail of one miner's mistress and wife fighting over him is included in all its crowd-pleasing glory.

Essentially, The 33 is a faithful if formulaic retelling of how they survived after the collapse of a gold and copper mine effectively buried them alive, 200 storeys down. Turns out that a 100-year-old mine managed with a laissez-faire approach to health and safety wasn't especially stable.

Some blatant Hollywoodification leaves a few characters’ leadership speeches feeling flat; it's the detail of how they survived that strikes a chord.

But then director Patricia Riggen, using a screenplay by Mikko Alanne, Craig Borten (Oscar nominated for Dallas Buyers Club) and Michael Thomas, deftly conveys what happens to the inner depths of a male psyche, and the families’ forceful demands of the Chilean government to act fast.

Riggen eschews treating the group as a homogenous, desperate mass, neatly zeroing in on de facto leader Mario (Antonio Banderas with all the charisma you'd expect), his boss and supporting members.

In the end it all amounts to an uplifting but not inspiring piece. One can't help but feel it should have left you in awe.