Deep-sea survival thriller ‘Last Breath’ is solid entertainment

Based on the documentary of the same name, which Parkinson co-directed in 2019, the dramatic feature re-tells the 2012 story of three deep-sea divers who experience a sudden catastrophe while running routine gas line maintenance. It’s a film of great visual detail, immersive in more ways than one. As its characters plunge into the icy depths off the Scottish coast, their blue-collar environment—their complicated cables and devices, strict routines, and euphemistic language for each part of the process (the tethers that supply them air are “umbilical cords”)—paints a sense of fragile comfort. We learn almost instinctively all that could go wrong, so that when it inevitably does, the resultant rescue saga is visceral and breathtaking.

Beginning with disturbing footage from the real event on which the film is based—courtesy of the crew’s underwater cameras—Last Breath provides some very direct hints as to what’s about to follow. And yet, each turn plays like a rollercoaster bend, with its destination just out of sight. Its characters may not beat with the many dimensions of real-world counterparts, but they’re functional enough to support the movie’s thrilling mechanics, as it unfurls carefully and chaotically.

Cole plays Chris Lemons, the ostensible protagonist and relative newcomer, who promises his fiancée Morag (Bobby Rainsbury) he’ll return in one piece. Their ominous parting imbues the film with intimate stakes as Lemons heads for the belly of the beast. At 1,000 feet below sea level, the divers must first undergo a slow, multi-day pressurization process in closed quarters, during which time Lemons is placed with his soon-to-be-retired mentor, the jovial Duncan Allcock (Harrelson), and a diver whose exploits are the stuff of legend, the blunt, no-nonsense David Yuasa (Liu).

It takes a while before things go awry, but up until this point, Parkinson takes us on a journey of what this job is like on the day-to-day, which provides its own cinematic delights. One might even call it competence porn. Seeing professionals excel at their complicated jobs is the basis for most good heist movies, which Last Breath could be likened to once Lemons finds himself stranded on the ocean floor, as a ticking clock appears and reappears on screen to remind us how much (or how little) oxygen he has left.

As a storm rages up above, the film plays out along a three-tiered structure. The ship itself, led by Captain Andre Jenson (Cliff Curtis) and his second-in-command Craig (Mark Bonnar) navigate a sudden storm that throws them off course, while the submerged platform tethered to them 1,000 feet below (dubbed “the bell”) floats in stasis, with Allcock and Yuasa aboard. Further down, Lemons waits for rescue with a mere 10 minutes of oxygen and a tiny flare separating him from eternal, infinite blackness. The interrelated complications at each level—exacerbated by a communications blackout—leads to a series of pulse-pounding dilemmas and trolley problems about procedure, made all the more urgent by how Parkinson and cinematographers Nick Remy Matthews and Ian Seabrook play with light and darkness beneath the depths. Lemons practically becomes a shadow in suspended animation, caught between life and death, as his fate hangs in the balance in gorgeous, terrifying silhouette vistas.

The film occasionally gives Lemons visions and flashes of Morag in desperate moments, setting up emotional parameters for his drive to survive, but it doesn’t use this device as a crutch. Instead, the enormous size of the impending disaster is given human grounding via cross-cutting between the three leads below the surface and the ship’s crew up above. Their distraught reaction shots create a rhythm around how the situation unfolds, as editor Tania Goding guides the plot by filtering it through a particularly potent medium: the human face.

There are only a handful of places that Last Breath loses itself, mostly in its final act. A few beats here and there don’t land as strongly as they could have, owing to how the movie presents its concluding developments: as inevitabilities. Characters getting into sticky situations can feel fated, or incidental, because of the drama it creates, but having them escape their circumstances just as easily—without the requisite sense of tension or overwhelming scale.

Thankfully, these deflating missteps are limited to only a handful of developments. The overall picture of Last Breath remains vivid and pulsating regardless, with enough of moments of gasp-inducing dread and fist-pumping relief to make it utterly worthwhile, turning what could have been a rote, by the numbers re-telling into a piece of robust, self-assured popcorn entertainment.