Review: Last Breath (2025)

Director:  Alex Parkinson

Stars:  Mark Bonnar, Simu Liu, Finn Cole

If there’s a nagging familiarity about Alex Parkinson’s earnest deep sea rescue drama, that might be because he’s told this story before in a documentary of the same name co-directed with Richard Da Costa in 2019. Evidently Parkinson didn’t feel finished with this remarkable account of survival in some of the most hostile terrain on the planet, but the process of re-telling it for popcorn munching audiences seems to have drained some of the vigor from the record. This seems like harsh criticism for a film that presents a tale of absolute professionalism with such commendable integrity, but there’s something ineffably inert about this latest iteration of Last Breath.

Chris Lemons (Finn Cole) is a saturation diver – one of the most dangerous vocations there is – trained to repair gas mains that cross ocean floors. On a routine job out in the North Sea off of Aberdeenshire a confluence of events that include a freak storm and a snagged umbilical line leave Chris stranded at the bottom of the sea with precious little oxygen, and his crewmates both submerged and above with few options to get him back.

Chris is joined on the dive by the relatively dis-compassionate David Yuasa (Simu Liu) and sentimental lifer Duncan “SAT Daddy” Allcock (Woody Harrelson), on his last dive before retirement. While nominal efforts are made to breathe life (no pun intended) into these men, they are typified by their no-nonsense commitment to the task. Days acclimating to the pressure allow shades of character to become sketched in before we’re sunk along with them to the ocean floor. From there it’s a minute-by-minute account of just how quickly routine turns into life-or-death for these men. Sweating it topside are dive supervisor Craig (a standout Mark Bonnar) and the freighter’s captain Andre Jenson (Cliff Curtis), but here too the same rigor perpetuates.

In spite of the best efforts of an overactive score handled by Paul Leonard-Morgan, Parkinson’s admirable discipline to stick to the story without embellishment leaves Last Breath with little room to cultivate tension. Even on-screen clocks ticking away Chris’ oxygen levels fail to instil any real nerve-shredding urgency, possibly because we’re relatively experienced with this kind of dramatic reconstruction. There’s no denying that the efforts of all involved beat some pretty incredible odds, but with an extant documentary in existence featuring the participation of those genuinely involved, this rerun feels oddly casual and a shade redundant. Harrelson’s star name on the masthead may draw recognition, but he has the least to do.

There’s a struggle here in giving Last Breath a damning review, because the professionalism evidenced on screen clearly extends to it’s making. It’s a well-mounted production, keen on detail, and featuring some underwater photography that’s undeniably hard to pull off. But there’s a backhanded word that haunts Last Breath in all departments, and that’s ‘workmanlike’. Workmanlike shouldn’t be a dirty word, and the collaborative efforts in bringing this story to bear once again are right there on the screen. But – some forgivable and appreciable sentimentality aside – Parkinson’s film comes off as stony faced as Liu’s David.

What ought to feel incredibly tense is instead rendered simply procedural. Commendable efforts all round, but it makes for a one-time watch at most, with the keener instinct being to seek out the documentary version at some remove down the road once the pertinent details of the story have been submerged in the memory.