“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”
Based on the 2019 documentary of the same name, Alex Parkinson’s Last Breath tells the thrilling 2012 story of three serious saturation divers who, while working in the North Sea, find themselves in a race against the clock when one of their umbilical cables is severed, cutting off their access to the primary oxygen supply.
Opening with actual footage from the event, Parkinson never hides the story’s direction from his audience. He assumes you’ve seen the documentary. He expects you to know the story. How we get there is the emotion-filled ride that will keep audiences on the edge of their seat.
Finn Cole stars as Chris Lemons, our main protagonist, who promises his fiancee Morag that he’ll return home safely. While promises like that can be emotionally enriching, they cannot always be kept. Days later, over three hundred meters below the rising storm surge, Lemons is in the fight for his life as he switches to his emergency oxygen and is separated from his team.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
In the film, the saturation divers work in teams of three. Joining Lemons are Duncan (Woody Harrelson), a jovial veteran who strives to keep things light, and David (Simu Liu), a serious, strait-laced pro who tends to keep to himself. Their mission is to replace natural gas piping on the ocean floor. Barring the unexpected, it’s a routine assignment that will have them gone for a month.
As the ship locks into its diving position, the primarily automated routine is thrown into chaos when a storm engulfs the area, sending waves crashing and causing its GPS to fail. As the ship drifts away from the diving chamber, our trio below anxiously work to relocate themselves. In the haste, Chris is cast adrift. On emergency oxygen, he has mere minutes to live.
Up to this point, the film has been simple and quiet as Parkinson works to showcase the rather mundane everyday life of one of the world’s most dangerous jobs. And though the straightforward approach continues, you cannot deny the sudden infusion of energy thrust into the story as everyone rushes to rescue their fallen comrade.
Highlighted by stellar underwater photography and sound, Last Breath benefits from impressive stunts. With one of the original documentary directors helming this narrative feature, the film prioritizes the actual events without much embellishment. For that, I applaud Parkinson and his team.
The downside of such a fixation is that the film appears so focused on following the action that we lose sight of our characters. The small ensemble cannot do much more than bring a personality to their respective roles, always playing second to the events happening around them as they fight against fate to pull a man back from the brink of death.
At a relatively short ninety-three minutes, Last Breath bears a quick pace. Likely an intentional move by Parkinson to help audience members feel the angst and adrenaline of the moment, the film works masterfully within the construct of its purpose. And though lean and overly simplistic, it proves clean and heartfelt, triggering your emotions at just the right cadence to have you leaning in hard on this captivating story.
