Director: Alex Parkinson
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu, Finn Cole, Cliff Curtis
Certificate: 12A
Run Time: 94 mins

Last Breath is a survival thriller about the race to save a stranded deep-sea diver who gets stranded after an incident, with his back-up oxygen supply rapidly running out. The film’s directed by Alex Parkinson, remaking the 2019 documentary of the same name he co-directed with Richard da Costa into a feature film. 

Chris Lemons (Finn Cole) is the stranded diver in question, is a member of a team of saturation divers who maintain undersea gas lines in the North Sea at depths of around 100m. In order to simulate these conditions, they have to live onboard a vessel in a pressurised chamber for a few days before and after they work underwater so that they remain at pressure. He works with Duncan Allcock (Woody Harrelson), a veteran who is being forced into early retirement after this shift and David Yuasa (Simu Liu), a no-nonsense, aloof colleague. 

Last Breath is a taut and anxiety-inducing thriller and really excels when it’s at heart of the action. It’s a film that reminds you that breathing is a privilege and Parkinson ratchets up the tension, deftly conveying why being a saturation diver is one of the most dangerous jobs on earth. Adding a timer on-screen to remind us how much time Chris has been with or without oxygen is an excellent touch. 

The performances are also top-notch, with Woody Harrelson and Simu Liu the highlights and Liu stealing the show as he slowly comes out of his shell. I’d have liked to have had more meat on the bone with both characters though – they’re not particularly well-developed and it’s the proven charisma of both actors that sells these characters. Finn Cole is also great, even if he spends a large amount of the film incapacitated and brilliantly but subtly shows his apprehension for the task right from the very beginning. 

The major issue with Last Breath though is just how generic it is when we’re not in the heat of its distressing crisis. As the film opens, we get the expected interaction between Chris and his fiancee where he reassures her of his safety and that it’s just another day at the office. There’s also the usual overegged ending, which feels almost like a parody of a romcom, complete with closing captions and footage from the real event with an emotionally manipulative tone. 

Last Breath ultimately succeeds on the strength of its remarkable story and Parkinson does well to trim a lot of the fat out where he can. But it’s a shame the director doesn’t manage to break convention or at least do something a bit more interesting with its opening and closing scenes that fall into sigh-inducing melodrama.