‘The 33’ review: Real-life mine drama doesn’t dig too deep

The ordeal of the 33 miners trapped for more than two months beneath Chile’s Atacama Desert is a story fraught with peril, not least for any filmmaker trying to bring it to the screen. The remarkable rescue operation unfolded on live television in 2010, which means many of us already know its outcome. What’s more, the miners’ post-rescue lives don’t have the uniform happy endings that Hollywood prefers.

That hasn’t stopped director Patricia Riggen from delivering a glossy-looking, occasionally compelling and fairly predictable version of events. Starring Antonio Banderas as the group’s leader, Mario Sepulveda, along with a very good Lou Diamond Phillips as safety engineer Luis Urzua and Rodrigo Santoro as Chilean mining minister Laurence Golborne, “The 33” tells an already-told story in a familiar way.

The film gets to the action quickly, sending its protagonists into the mine and then trapping them in a spectacular sequence of collapsing rock. The film drives home effectively how quickly the miners — expendable workers in an industry not known for its largesse — resign themselves to death. If not for Mario’s organizational skills and optimism, the 33 may have given up within days.

“The 33” is based on Hector Tobar’s book “Deep Down Dark,” but some of the characters seem too tidily drawn. Alex (Mario Casas), a young man with a baby on the way, and Dario (Juan Pablo Raba), an alcoholic who experiences a religious epiphany, are composites who have the whiff of screenwriterly fiction. Juliette Binoche, as Dario’s sister, provides glimmers of none-too-convincing romance with Golborne.

You wouldn’t know it from this film, but the miners have had difficulty coming back above ground. Some remain traumatized, others are scraping by financially and several have returned to the mines. (Nine miners have filed a lawsuit over this movie’s royalties, though not against the filmmakers themselves.) These after-stories fall outside the movie’s mandate, but they nag at the pretty picture painted by “The 33.” The movie closes with scenes of the real miners gathered around a bountiful picnic table on a beach — a fanciful, overly symbolic sequence that feels all too much like a dream.