‘The Rescue’ chronicles heroism in helping kids trapped in cave

“The Rescue” plunges Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin into new depths. The filmmakers, known for the Oscar-winning documentary “Free Solo,” which captured rock climber Alex Honnold’s successful quest to become the first to reach the top of El Capitan without ropes or harnesses, turned from that perilous 3,000-foot-high rock formation in Yosemite National Park to another heroic effort — this one deep within the ground.

The film, a theatrical release from National Geographic Documentary Films, chronicles the improbable mission to safely retrieve a dozen boys and their soccer coach who were trapped for two weeks more than a mile deep inside the Tham Luang cave system after it flooded.

The 2018 rescue became an international obsession, and then a sensation, when a crazy-quilt crew spearheaded by a pair of middle-aged British amateur cave divers — Rick Stanton and…