A true story about seasoned deep-sea divers who battle the raging elements to rescue their crewmate trapped hundreds of feet below the ocean’s surface.
If “Last Breath” was supposed to give me a heart attack, their best efforts wasn’t quite enough to keep my head above water.
Taking the accounts of real-life stories and reshaping them for a screenplay is an industry standard but for me, filtering these true stories through skepticism and a grain of salt is somehow getting both easier and more difficult as time passes due to not really knowing how much is dramatized for the sake of stretching the truth or telling a good narrative out of it. This story, based on a horrific 2012 diving accident between three divers regarding an oil pipeline malfunction at bottom of the Northern Sea, sets the stage for the classic endurance, survival-at-all-costs disaster flick we’ve seen so much of while put together as a tribute for the highly skilled blue collared people doing the dirty jobs someone has to do. A procedural drama very literal in its intentions both to entertain and differ as a companion piece to the 2019 documentary based on the same name, the unwavering commitment to authenticity is palpable as I admit to liking how it gives the viewer an idea of the profession and the part everyone plays in the high-stakes world of offshore diving but all to a fault.
Pure comfort food, this is; bookended by many cliched tropes and telegraphing its every move in advance, the films’s structure, just like Black Bag, spends the vast majority of its time letting the situation construct and illustrate the movies nature while being so monosyllabic in not straying away from that strict path. It does limit the scope and scale of the story’s own boundaries as a whole (mostly to the detriment of the viewers imagination) but for a lavishly dramatic re-enactment of real events, it’s treated less like a spectative viewing and more like journalism due to nature of its own specificity. It knows what it wants to be and sticks firmly to it for the brief 93 minutes it’s given, never really overplaying its hand.
So I can understand the manner in which it was made, but that doesn’t mean I have to be all in on the execution. All of it feels too mechanical for my taste and doesn’t completely live up to the requirements of what a thriller is supposed to provide. Its rather loose focus and vague emphasis on the unpredictability of uncharted territory has been more effectively handled in movies like Apollo 13, which present more engaging stakes and a clear sense of urgency—elements that this movie oddly lack and while the story here is still vastly mesmerizing on its own merits, it does make you question your appetite for a more cinematic experience. The real challenge lies in translating raw, real-life drama into something equally compelling in a cinematic sense, and it's a hurdle that this movie, true to reality yet muted in emotional resonance, doesn’t fully overcome.
Given that the director Alex Parkinson was also the one behind the documentary on this event back in 2019, he already has extensive knowledge of the in’s and outs on this story; he employs a pertinently curious approach to the movies visual and auditory language, focusing on the people nature effects rather than just the volatile whirlwind of nature itself. It’s an admirable direction that unfortunately feels too causal for the project he’s attached to.
Oddly-relaxed presentations in movies such as this are quite the norm since they tend to end one of two ways — either everyone survives against all odds, or it becomes a heart-wrenching tragedy. While treading that line towards only one extreme, it ends up matching the same energy as a literal documentary while significantly undercutting most of the drama.
Grant Montgomery’s production design here attempts to encapsulate and convey the divers' precarious environment by crafting a set that replicates the confined space and hazardous intimacy of their dire situation. For a fleeting moment, it does manage to evoke that sensation of impending risk and is very deliberate in using the limited spacing it has to heighten the intensity of said environment but it has an unintended consequence: it’s oddly inert and static, leaving a peculiar sense of lifelessness. But what does help elevates that, albeit momentarily, is the exceptional camerawork; the cinematography is undoubtedly the standout feature about this. It masterfully extracts and draws out every bit of value from the footage, skillfully alternating between dynamic situational shots and artfully composed cinematic angles with remarkable precision, placement and poise—a far cry from the lethargic sluggishness that the story presents. Not only that, the editing also breathes life into the visuals thanks in part by injecting a sense of rhythm to the situation and the absolutely gorgeous lighting transforms underwater scenes into a mesmerizing dance of shimmering blues and greens, casting an ethereal glow that captivates the eye.
For an hour and a thirty-three minute runtime, the lean and compact pacing dropping us right into the thick of it ensures no proper time is wasted but offers nothing else in return, assuming you don’t consider the crisp sound design and so-so costuming on everyone except the main three, I found perhaps the most saccharine of recently released musical scoring this year (vaguely memorable and decent enough on its own but massively overcompensating for how majestic these moments are supposed to feel) and as the movie promises, a fraught throughline of suspense is achieved that inspires some equal amount of cathartic release before defusing that tension almost immediately and never recapturing it.
Cold, Harrelson and Liu give strictly competent performances that match the straitened ranges of their characters; I can apply that statement to every actor in this but keep in mind that this is still very little material for them to chow down on outside their character’s range of work or cracking the occasional one-liner. But honestly, when you’re shackled with dialogue this crummy and bargain-basic, there really is only so much you can do to make it work.
Despite honing extremely close to the facts and honoring the details of a harrowing event with proper respect, “Last Breath” is yet another firm reminder how not every tale of rescue, teamwork and defying impossible odds can be an adaptable feature on the silver screen. It’s by no means a bad watch, especially for those interested in the accuracy of the ordeal, but it remains a fairly unremarkable endeavor when judged by the standards of what a truly gripping thriller should evoke.
