There was a time when I went to Puerto Rico with my girlfriend and we were supposed to go snorkeling. You know, that fun activity where you put your head a few inches below the water to see the beautiful sea creatures? Yeah, I couldn’t do it. Backed out at the last second. Who needs dignity anyway? The characters in Last Breath travel 330 feet under the sea. Essentially, I’ve just witnessed my worst nightmare.
A true story unlike any other, this film tells the story of saturation divers who must travel deep below the ocean’s surface. When diver Chris Lemons (Finn Cole) has his umbilical cord severed, he becomes trapped in the ocean without heat or light and only a small amount of gas left in his breathing tank. Last Breath chronicles the effort to rescue Chris before it’s too late. Director Alex Parkinson adapts his 2019 documentary about the subject into a narrative feature film that works pretty well as an underwater thriller but also has a few hiccups that prevent it from reaching its full potential.
There are certain leaps that must be made when adapting a true story into a Hollywood feature film. No movie based on a true story is ever an eye-to-eye adaptation, but Last Breath is generally a faithful retelling of this tale. We first learn a few things about saturation diving, and how it’s one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet. These characters travel dangerous territory, similar to astronauts traveling through outer space. Much like films such as Apollo 13 and Gravity where characters are stuck in space, we have people trapped in the ocean. Much like in space, they’re floating around, they have a limited amount of oxygen, and if they don’t get out of there soon, they’re dead meat.
We first meet Chris in a loving romantic relationship with Morag (Bobby Rainsbury). The film doesn’t give him too much characterization, but it establishes that he is newer to this job than the rest of his peers and gives him something to lose. The emotional stakes are tied pretty closely to the physical ones, which is necessary for this story. We soon meet some of his co-workers, including soon-to-be-retired Duncan Allcock (Woody Harrelson) and no-nonsense David Yuasa (Simu Liu). The first act is crucial to getting the audience up to speed on these characters, but unfortunately, it only lightly touches on all of this.
There’s a better version of this screenplay that pulls greater drama, tension, and emotional stakes out of everyone. With Last Breath, it often feels like we’re getting the bare minimum. However, once we have our inciting incident, the movie picks up considerably. One of the best moments is when that umbilical cord snaps and all the sound completely cuts out. It’s a visceral directorial choice that elicited a few audible gasps from my audience. From here, we also have an occasional timer that appears on screen, showing how many minutes of oxygen Chris has left in his tank, and soon enough, how long he’s gone with zero oxygen left.
We also have a lot of sequences in a control room where people are trying to save Chris remotely. These scenes work surprisingly well, especially because we have talented actors like Cliff Curtis and Mark Bonnar grounding it all. But a good chunk of the second act does not feature Harrelson and Liu’s characters, even though they have the potential to be the most interesting people on screen. Harrelson delivers wonderful performances in everything he’s in, and he gets one monologue where we learn how important it is for him to get Chris safe. However, the anecdote he provides surrounds someone else rather than himself. If it were himself, that drama would become even better.
As for Liu’s character, that’s the biggest missed opportunity. He’s very curt at the beginning of the film, and he ends up becoming one of the most active players in trying to save Chris’s life. This doesn’t fully work because he isn’t a very interesting character beyond that. The movie gives him a lot to do, particularly in the final act, but there isn’t enough there emotionally. If the movie had created greater tension between Chris and David in the first act, the payoff of David fighting to save Chris’s life could have had greater weight. But most of the dialogue scenes end up becoming the good version, not the great version of what they could be.
But Last Breath takes you on a ride so intense that it’s hard not to be invested in this story. You feel every bit of the danger of this situation. Even if the film doesn’t offer world-ending stakes, the stakes are personal and gripping because it’s about a journey to save one man’s life. While it doesn’t reach its full potential, it is a thrilling tale by nature and it works wonderfully as a tale of human resilience.
SCORE: 6/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 6 equates to “Decent.” It fails to reach its full potential and is a run-of-the-mill experience.
Disclosure: ComingSoon attended Focus Features‘ world premiere for our Last Breath review.
