Hollywood has a long history of rescue movies; men trapped in terrifying situations while a separate group of men figure out how to get them out. “Black Hawk Down,” “Captain Phillips,” even something like Tony Scott’s “Unstoppable” – audiences have always gotten a kick out of watching someone survive something extraordinary.
The newest addition to the oeuvre is “Last Breath,” directed by Alex Parkinson and based on the documentary of the same name that he co-directed back in 2019. The film is based on the true story of diver Chris Lemons (Finn Cole), whose umbilical cord snapped during a routine saturation dive, leaving him trapped 300 feet underwater with only a small amount of oxygen left in his backup tank.
The rescue mission to get Chris out of the water takes up the bulk of the 93-minute runtime of “Last Breath.” The moments bookending the rescue mission itself are pretty clunky, and one of the lead performances is far outclassed by the others. But a movie like this can get away with frayed edges if the mission itself leaves you wanting to pump your fist into the air and cheer at the strength of human ingenuity and spirit. “Last Breath” isn’t the best of this type of movie by any means, but it manages to achieve that cathartic feeling at the very least.
Chris and his fellow teammates, Duncan (Woody Harrelson) and David (Simu Liu) are tasked with fixing a pipeline that runs along the bottom of the ocean. They start the repair job in a small underwater capsule, which is in turn attached to a ship sitting out in the middle of the North Sea, before David and Chris dive down to the pipeline. The cord keeping Chris tethered to that capsule snaps after the ship’s dynamic positioning system fails, causing it to drift away from the dive site.
Before we make it to the mission itself, “Last Breath” does a really dragging bit of exposition, introducing us to Chris’ fiance Morag (Bobby Rainsbury) – who fills the “Diane Lane in ‘The Perfect Storm’” spot here, although somehow has less to do – as well as Duncan, David, and the other characters who will sit in the ship’s control room during the rescue mission.
These early moments are characterized by drone shots of Scotland and character beats that are really only as strong as the actors playing them. Harrelson is doing a pretty endearing “Jimmy Buffet as a diver” bit, while Liu’s attempt at a stoic, no-nonsense type comes across almost impressively blank. Liu, who is always better when he’s playing a bit silly, is unfortunately out-acted across the board. When the mission goes wrong, his tight-lipped shock just doesn’t connect as strongly as Harrelson’s palpable, wet-eyed fear.
Once the mission starts, the underwater photography (most of the underwater shooting took place in an 11-meter-deep tank in Malta) is thrilling to watch. The darkness of the deep ocean plays a huge part in that thrill, with Chris often caught in complete blackness with nothing but a red flare that barely lights up his silhouette. But while those underwater moments might be the most nail-biting parts of “Last Breath,” the real pressure cooker of the film takes place in the ship’s control room with a bunch of grizzled character actors doing their best to save a life.
One of the themes that runs through “Last Breath” is man v. machine, or more specifically, how humans can’t be fully replaced by computers, because then what happens when the computers fail? Early in the film, David makes a crack to Duncan, who is being forced into early retirement, that he shouldn’t worry so much about it – machines will replace them all in 10 years anyway. When the ship’s positioning system fails, the crew on the ship, which includes the likes of Cliff Curtis and Scottish actor Mark Bonnar, has to manually try to move the ship back to the dive site and maintain that position. Their first attempt to rescue Chris is through operating some kind of underwater machine, but that ultimately fails because of Chris’ decision to attach himself to the pipe so he wouldn’t drift away if he lost consciousness. Throughout the film, humans are asked to do what machines cannot.
And isn’t that the real draw of a movie like this? What is that moment that movies like this inevitably have, when everyone in the control room breaks into cheers and starts hugging each other, if not relief that human beings have triumphed over something impossible? Audiences can be willing to forgive a lot of clunky exposition and set up if a film delivers on the catharsis of that moment.
Lucky for “Last Breath,” Chris’ story is incredible no matter which way you slice it, and the actors in the control home hammer home that utter miracle. There’s a moment when the hugs and cheers are dying down where Curtis’ character, the captain of the ship, leans over and lets out a couple of shaky breaths. Curtis has played the captain with determined focus and gravitas up until this point, as a man who doesn’t buckle under pressure. So that moment when he finally does buckle, when he lets the weight of what has just occurred finally settle over him, works like a charm.