Last Breath (2025) Focus/Drama-Thriller RT: 93 minutes Rated PG-13 (brief strong language) Director: Alex Parkinson Screenplay: Mitchell LaFortune, Alex Parkinson and David Brooks Music: Paul Leonard-Morgan Cinematography: Nick Remy Matthews Release date: February 28, 2025 (US) Cast: Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu, Finn Cole, Cliff Curtis, Mark Bonnar, MyAnna Buring, Josef Altin, Bobby Rainsbury.
Rating: ***
The survival thriller Last Breath is the second BOATS (Based on a True Story) movie to hit theaters in as many weeks. It’s directed by first-time feature filmmaker Alex Parkinson who also co-directed the same-named 2019 documentary upon which it’s based. It’s a fictionalized account of Chris Lemons, a saturation diver who nearly died when he got stranded under the sea without oxygen for almost 30 minutes. The film chronicles his colleagues’ efforts to locate and rescue him. It’s quite a story.
I should start by telling you what a saturation diver is. They’re the guys (and girls) who engage in a specialized kind of diving that allows them to remain in the water at great depths for extended periods of time. The divers in Last Breath are responsible for repairs to the pipeline lying about 100 meters under the North Sea. It’s not a simple job to begin with, but circumstances turn it into a real ordeal.
Chris (Cole, Peaky Binders) heads off for a 30-day gig to repair pipeline off the coast of Scotland. His worried fiancee Morag (Rainsbury, Vigil) begs him to be careful. He assures her he’ll be fine. The young diver boards the vessel Bibby Topaz where he’s teamed with veteran Duncan Allcock (Harrelson, Natural Born Killers) and super-serious David Yuasa (Liu, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings).
After three days of pressurization, they’re ready to get started. David and Chris get in the water while Duncan takes care of the topside work. The ship’s positioning systems fails and it drifts off-course into rough waters. It drags both divers from where they were works and causes Chris’ umbilical tether to snap. Without it, he won’t have hot water to regulate his body temperature or oxygen to help him breathe. Unable to return to the ship, he has to wait down there to be found and saved from certain death. Of course, the longer he’s down there, the more likely the mission will go from rescue to recovery.
Although it would easy to Google the outcome of this situation, I’m not going to reveal it here. I knew absolutely nothing about it going in. I didn’t even know Last Breath was a true story until the movie started. For the most part, it’s a compelling tale. It’s reasonably tense with the ship’s crew trying to get their systems working again while Duncan and Dave try to save their friend while flying blind.
The thing is there have been hundreds of survival movies like Last Breath. The one that springs to mind first is Gravity in which Sandra Bullock and George Clooney find themselves stranded in outer space with no easy way home. The 2013 sci-fi-drama was an experience if you saw it in IMAX 3D. I don’t know if I’d say that about Last Breath. I saw it a regular theater with no bells and whistles. I’m sure some of the shots would look cool, but the movie as a whole doesn’t call for it. Still, it features some great underwater cinematography by Nick Remy Matthews (ISS). For a change, it’s not murky. It’s dark, but you can see what’s going on at all times.
The acting in Last Breath is just fine. I have no complaints about it. The characters are exactly the type you’d expect to find in a film such as this. Woody is the older, seen-it-all/done-it-all diver about to be retired by the company. This is to be his last job. Simu is the guy who takes his job extremely seriously, at one point warning Chris about distractions when he tapes a pic of his fiancee next to his bunk. Finn is the young enthusiast excited about working with a diving legend like Dave (aka “The Vulcan”). Cliff Curtis (Whale Rider) is solid as the ship’s captain trying to do right by the divers and his frightened crew. We’ve seen these types before and I’m sure we’ll see them again.
I really don’t have much else to say about Last Breath. It’s a pretty good movie. It’s what my dad called a matinee movie. You see it during the day at bargain prices. In the 80s and 90s, it would have been a “wait for video” title. It’s good, but hardly worth the fuss of a trip to the cinema. It’s enjoyable but instantly forgettable.
