‘Last Breath’ Review – Based on a True Story Survival Thriller Won’t Leave You Breathless

The opening of Last Breath, a grim scene of a deep sea saturation diver spasming from oxygen deprivation at the bottom of the ocean, signals a nail-biting survival thriller ahead. That Last Breath is also based on the 2019 documentary of the same name, which in turn details the 2012 account of a major saturation diving accident in the North Sea, further suggests a gripping watch centered around a frantic rescue facing impossible odds. As the film then rewinds to establish the events that lead up to this harrowing scene, however, what should’ve been an intense, breathless scenario instead becomes flattened by its broad, detached documentarian approach to illuminating a rarely observed yet highly dangerous job.

Tenured divers Duncan Allcock (Woody Harrelson) and David Yuasa (Simu Liu) are teamed with relative newcomer Chris Lemons (Finn Cole) on a routine assignment to maintain a pipeline at the bottom of the ocean nearly 100 meters deep. Routine, in this instance, requires a lot of careful planning and preparation for all, including the ship captained by Jenson (Cliff Curtis) and 1st Officer Hanna (MyAnna Buring), who lowers the divers to extreme depths via diving bell. A freak power outage aboard the ship during high winds disrupts their standard procedure and leads to catastrophe, requiring all hands on deck to race against the clock and recover Chris when his umbilical cord is snapped, and he’s stranded below.

Director Alex Parkinson, who wrote and co-directed the 2019 doc, approaches his fictionalized vision with the same documentarian eye. Last Breath, despite drawing from a true account, gives a bird’s eye view rather than a personal entry point into an extreme survival tale. Screenwriters Mitchell LaFortune, Parkinson, and David Brooks give precedence to establishing the jargon and processes for the job itself, putting their characters on the periphery.

Liu’s David is stone-cold serious about the job, for good reason, but is employed solely as the muscle in rescue operations. Harrelson is sidelined for most of the film as the relaxed and playful diver so tenured that he’s facing a forced retirement, but this is a subplot that never amounts to anything nor contributes to the inert emotional center. As the diver trapped below, Cole’s Chris fares strongest with character development, with a worried fiancée at home to provide motivation, but there’s far too much intricate groundwork to cover with attempts to save his life to connect with any of the characters introduced, despite them being based on actual people. It’s as though Last Breath is reticent to deter too much from history and instead opts to paint this account in the broadest brushstrokes possible.

What Last Breath lacks in emotional depth, it makes up for in form and technique. The underwater photography by Ian Seabrook is stunning, capturing Chris’s plight with breathtaking clarity that induces Thalassophobia, especially in instances involving the eerie glow of a red flare. Parkinson also recreates the grainy camera footage that chronicled Chris’s shocking plight, raising the visual interest and injecting intense bursts of adrenaline when Chris’s predicament becomes more dire. But cutting to the sea’s surface to include the many moving parts of this risky rescue, particularly the moral dilemma of the ship’s crew, works against the mounting tension of the ticking clock situation.

Despite a few exhilarating moments of terrifying aquatic-based survival sequences, Last Breath mostly forgets its thriller elements. Instead, it wants to relay a remarkable human story in the face of insurmountable odds, but it gets so tangled in its technical details and big-picture storytelling that it forgets to inject life and leaves its cast mostly adrift with little to do. Last Breath won’t leave you breathless, but it does present an effective introduction to the perilous job of saturation diving.

Last Breath releases in theaters on February 28, 2025.

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