Imagine being stranded 300 feet beneath the ocean, your air running out, the surface an unreachable dream. That’s the nightmare that Last Breath brings to life—a gripping retelling of a true story of survival. But how do you turn such a harrowing experience into a cinematic thriller?
That was for director Alex Parkinson to figure out as he adapts his documentary about this subject into a narrative feature film. At the red carpet at the AMC Lincoln Square in New York City, he and a few of his peers spoke about making this movie a reality and sending audiences swimming into the deep, unforgiving waters for a harrowing experience. Stars Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu, and Finn Cole all showed up to support their latest movie, arriving in theaters on February 28.
“The biggest difference between going from documentary to narrative was in documentary, you have talking heads,” says Parkinson, who previously directed a 2019 documentary about Chris Lemons, the diver who got trapped in the ocean. “You have interviewees who are telling you what you’re looking at and what the characters and people are feeling, but you don’t have that in fiction. So when I was at the script stage, I was working with other writers, [and] it was all about how to get the information across the emotion across in that feature way. So for me, as a documentary maker, that’s the biggest step.”
How do you adapt Last Breath’s true story into a fictional one? “You have to stretch it,” says co-writer Mitchell LaFortune. “You pump up the tension in other characteristics. I mean, the North Sea is known to be one of the hardest locations in the world to navigate. It’s rough, with 20-foot swells every day. So we amplify some of the outside chaos, but then we focus as much as we can on the characters. I mean, at the end of the day, you don’t need to know anything about diving to love this movie. You know, it’s really about that motivating factor that’s deep inside of us that allows us to do these incredible courageous tests.”
“It’s human endurance,” LaFortune continues. “You know, it’s like, if you watch a movie about Everest or you watch Apollo 13, it’s this gumshoe quality that human beings have to survive against all the elements. So I think that anybody can come see Last breath, [and] you’ll be captured by the intensity. I mean, it moves really quickly. But I think that all these things are qualities that we all have inside of each other. And I think that that’s reassuring, you know, to see and to visualize.”
But how faithful is Last Breath to the true story of what happened?
“I wanted to keep it as authentic as possible,” says Parkinson. “And that goes all the way back, to think about the emotional arc and the actual feeling and the sense of camaraderie of the team have and all of that. But then when it gets to sort of individual story feeds, there were bits where there were extensions of truth to allow you to get into the mindset of the characters. So there were all things that could have happened that didn’t on that night. So there weren’t outrageous things like an oil rig blowing up or something like that. It was all of the world they were in basically. And it was all to allow you to get into the character’s headspace.”
Finn Cole (Peaky Blinders, F9) portrays Chris Lemons, and he explained what it was like to be on that set. “The craziest part of it is for sure to do with the fact that we were doing this all practically,” Cole says. “We were doing this for real. We were working with all the real equipment and we had some really, really great people training us. And that was definitely the wildest thing, is that like what you see in this movie is real, and that’s what makes it so immersive, so exciting.”
When asked about the most dangerous work he’s ever done in a film, he said, “Oh, it’s gotta be this. But you know, at the same time, we’ve done such extensive training that you do feel safe. That’s why you do it, and that’s why you work with the best people. We were fortunate enough to work with those people, so it’s definitely the most dangerous, but we were for sure in safe hands, so that helped.”
