‘Last Breath’ Review
The desire to take a larger-than-life story from real life and dramatize it further has always seemed unavoidable. The opportunity to put a score over top of it, maybe shoot it a little differently, edit it to heighten the tension; there are always ways to depict real life as more exciting, even when the factual events that transpired are thrilling enough. Director Alex Parkinson did that with 2019’s documentary Last Breath, co-directed by Richard da Costa. In a baffling decision though, Parkinson returns to the same story (using the same title, as well) of a saturation diver who found himself trapped underwater without oxygen or communication with the rest of his team, and tries to beef it up with famous actors and a more emotional resonance with its lead character. However, Last Breath is a dramatically inert adaptation of a stellar story of survival, tragically fumbled in the hands of poor direction and a shallow screenplay.
The screenplay ultimately brings down this film the most, though many other problems surface as a result. Co-written by Parkinson, Mitchell LaFortune, and David Brooks, Last Breath follows a deep sea dive mission in the North Sea that quickly goes south when an electrical failure and severed umbilical tether leaves Chris Lemons (Finn Cole) stranded a hundred feet below sea level with only five minutes of oxygen left in his tank. Part of a three-person team consisting of himself, Dave Yuasa (Simu Liu), and Duncan Allock (Woody Harrelson), Chris is forced to quickly figure out a way to stay alive while the rest of his team and the ship’s captain (Cliff Curtis) and dive supervisor (Mark Bonnar) above water scramble to save him. A true story wrapped up in disaster movie elements, the most surprising aspect of Last Breath is that nothing ever feels suspenseful.
Assuming you don’t know the story's events, there may be a slight sense of tension here, but it’s hardly conveyed in the film itself. What does come through is what the film states at the beginning of its thankfully brief runtime: saturation diving is one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet. People going several hundred feet underwater and being able to spend more extended periods than most while working on pipelines and structures is an incredible achievement that maintains a lot of risk. It’s something that the film tries to present a little bit with Chris’s relationship at home, but it only really brings that connection into the fold at a bare minimum to force an emotional reaction from the audience. In fact, almost no character in the film feels like they exist outside of the job at hand, and even that is filled with expository remarks as if these people have not been doing this for years. This, combined with a flashing clock and a very mechanical approach to explaining what needs to be done, accentuates the notion that Parkinson and company have little faith in the audience’s ability to get invested without knowing everything at all times.
There are some interesting decisions made to try to blur the line between documentary and fiction in the film’s use of diegetic cameras and a dependence on the darkness at the depth of the ocean to emphasize the isolation of its protagonist. The underwater photography from Ian Seabrook is particularly effective at building suspense out of an unknown vastness that could serve as a tomb for the inexperienced and unlucky. Films set largely underwater tend to have a similar feeling as movies set in space, but are personally more terrifying because the likelihood of you ending up in space doesn’t even compare to the probability of being in the ocean. Unfortunately, Chris’s problems are outlined from the beginning—leaving the potential to dramatize the film further trapped in a vacuum, much like the characters who seem to have almost no background.
This all lends itself to the mechanical nature of the film. There is a problem and a solution; the only real threat throughout the film is time. Including the team aboard the ship demonstrates the importance of communication between the divers and the crew who keep them connected to the vessel. However, it also highlights how much a saturation diver can do on their own in this situation. The scrambling doesn’t happen below sea level with Dave and Duncan, and instead places most of the stress on the captain to resolve all of the issues so they can attempt a rescue. Last Breath struggles to make any of this enjoyable because the characters are not compelling and those in peril are sidelined while less nuanced characters take the helm. It’s all matter of fact, which begs the question: why did this need to be turned from documentary to narrative feature?
Casting Hollywood actors like Liu and Harrelson would seem like the rationalization for why this exists, as it might turn a profit by just saying Harrelson and Liu act in a survival thriller based on a true story. It has certainly worked in the past. The rub is that Harrelson is arguably the bigger draw here—especially for the audience that would want to see this kind of film—and he could not stick out more in this. The dialogue is generic across the board, but Harrelson doesn’t even feel like he’s trying to be more than himself. An actor who has proven capable of being charismatic and charming while still maintaining a vulnerability, the performance is stilted and dragged down even further by the screenplay. Meanwhile, Liu is underwhelming but serviceable as his character is given almost nothing to say to keep him stoic and focused on the mission. Generic characters don’t necessarily have to be boring if the performances can help it, but this is not one of those times.
Last Breath is just a confusing project from its inception. It brings in Hollywood actors but doesn’t require much from them because it’s more focused on the minutiae of the operation. It is the kind of film where, once the credits roll, you will look up whether or not this happened and be shocked to find out that it did—but the allure is never in the filmmaking. There’s a compelling story at its core, but there have been plenty of dramatizations in the past that have succumbed to the same issue of sticking too close to the nuts and bolts of the narrative as opposed to making audiences care about the characters involved. Last Breath is a shallow adaptation that barely manages to depict its real-life story with any passion and struggles to justify its dramatized retelling of events.
