Last Breath Review: I Don’t Think A Movie This Inert Qualifies For The Thriller Genre

I don’t consider myself a stickler when it comes to defining the parameters of genre, but I also think that each one comes pre-packaged with expectations if not outright promises. If a movie calls itself a romance, I think it’s fair to anticipate that the story will feature two or more characters falling in love. If a movie calls itself horror, I sit down in the theater bracing myself for scares. And if a movie calls itself a thriller, I assume it will make every attempt to raise my blood pressure and keep my ass balancing on the edge of my chair.

So allow this to be my formal complaint about director Alex Parkinson’s Last Breath and its genre classification. The new film certainly has markings of a thriller – it’s based on a true story of survival and has life-or-death stakes play out hundreds of feet beneath the ocean – but there are exactly zero thrills to offer. It adapts the details of a harrowing event and provides audiences with a look into the dangerous world of being a saturation diver, but it’s also shockingly boring in doing so and fails to translate the terrible tension of the reality on the screen.

Parkinson previously directed the documentary of the same name from 2019, and while I admit that I have not seen that feature, I’m left imagining that the feature adaptation must hone extremely close to the facts, as it’s the only logical excuse for why the new film is as dull as it is. It features some extremely talented actors in key roles, but their personalities never evolve beyond tropes, and the film is wholly lacking in compelling narrative developments after the inciting incident. Last Breath thankfully doesn’t overplay its hand, its final cut being a brisk 93 minutes, but it’s not an entertaining way to spend an hour-and-a-half.

Finn Cole plays Chris Lemons, a young man employed in one of the world’s most dangerous jobs. He is a saturation diver, which means that he is trained to perform long term deep-sea operations, and he is tapped for his first mission to do maintenance on an oil pipeline in the North Sea. He is teamed with Duncan Allcock (Woody Harrelson), a veteran and paternal figure who is being forced into retirement following one last job, and David Yuasa (Simu Liu), a stoic who keeps his colleagues at a distance. After days of preparing their bodies for the literal pressure of their job, they set off to the repair site.

While Duncan stays in a diving bell secured to a support vessel on the surface, Chris and David plunge to the ocean floor. Everything goes wrong when the support vessel’s dynamic positioning system fails during a storm, and as the ship begins to drift, it results in Chris’ umbilical tether being severed. David is able to make it back to the diving bell, but his colleague is left at the oil pipeline with an extremely limited air supply. Every minute counts in finding Chris and getting him to safety, which sounds thrilling… but it’s really not.

Reality is treated as a strength by Last Breath, but it’s very much a weakness.

When filmmakers discuss diversions from reality in the making of movies “based on a true story,” the general excuse is that they aren’t making a documentary; there should be a natural understanding from the audience in the making of any narrative feature that some liberties are taken. It’s kind of a cop out, but I very much wish that there was more of that energy in Last Breath, as this is a case of the details of the true story ultimately failing to be cinematic.

I went into my screening not knowing anything about the real events that the film is based on, but being the veteran moviegoer that I am, I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to be watching a story about a man who, despite the best efforts of his colleagues, tragically died on the floor of the ocean as a result of a technical failure. This in mind, my hopes for entertainment instead rested on being surprised by the inventive and compelling maneuvers by the supporting characters that would result in the protagonist being saved. This expectation was never satisfied. The most “interesting” thing that happens in the rescue mission is a crew member of the support vessel (Josef Altin) going into a server room and rewiring some cables so that the dynamic positioning system will take seconds to reboot instead of an hour. It’s a snore.

Why cast Woody Harrelson and Simu Liu if you’re not going to let them do anything?

One would think that the casting of charismatic stars like Woody Harrelson and Simu Liu would be utilized as a remedy for this narrative issue, as any conflict can be compelling if you deeply care about the characters living through it – but this is just another one of Last Breath’s shortcomings. In describing Duncan and David above, I wasn’t being purposefully brief or tactful in saving surprises for the big screen; there simply isn’t anything else more to their presented personalities. One is a blend of affable and wistful as he mentors Chris and says goodbye to a profession he loves, and the other is emotionally cold, but reveals passion in the effort to save his colleague. Harrelson and Liu (not to mention Cliff Curtis, who plays the personality-less captain for the support vessel) are capable of much more, but there is nothing for them to do with the material.

Last Breath features some interesting cinematography at least.

In collaboration with director of photography Nick Remy Matthews, Alex Parkinson utilizes diverse cinematography that adds layers of realism, with mounted cameras inside the atmosphere-adjusted pods and video from diving suits, and there are some stellar-looking sequences. The best of the runtime is following Chris after he has been untethered and is making his way back to the oil pipeline repair site – his only source of light being a flare that illuminates the water with a nightmarish red shade. It’s beautiful… but also far too brief.

I have nothing but sympathy for the trauma endured by the real people depicted in this story and respect for the rescue efforts, but as harrowing as the true events must have been, that tension is simply not properly translated as a narrative feature in Last Breath. Not all tales of rescue and defying impossible odds are cinematic unto themselves, and this film exists as proof.