Survival thrillers are not an untapped genre in storytelling. They place the audience right alongside someone as they strive to live through whatever tragedy has befallen them. We’re talking about films like The Book of Eli (2010), The Hunger Games (2012), The Shallows (2016), and Locked In (2025). But pulling from one’s imagination is one thing, whereas there are plenty of true stories that have been adapted for the big screen such as Apollo 13 (1995), 127 Hours (2010), Deepwater Horizon (2016), and Thirteen Lives (2022). Joining these latter titles is the Alex Parkinson dramatic thriller Last Breath, adapted from the Parkinson/Richard Da Costa co-directed documentary Last Breath (2019), which tells the true story of a maintenance undersea diver who was the subject of an intense rescue mission. After a brief stint in theaters, Last Breath is now available on digital and physical editions with a small smattering of special materials and a feature-length commentary track.
L-R: Finn Cole as Chris Lemons, Woody Harrelson as Duncan Allcock, and Simu Liu as Dave Yuasa in LAST BREATH, a Focus Features release. Photo Credit: Mark Cassar. © 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
While on a routine maintenance job, a combination of issues natural and technical result in saturation divers Chris and Dave (Finn Cole and Simu Liu, respectively) having to quickly stop their work, climb to the top of the undersea gas line manifold, and get back to the bell that will enable them to get back to relative safety until the issues pass. Except Chris’s support line, his umbilical, gets caught in the climb, ultimately snapping and leaving him with 10 minutes of air. Despite all the problems the entire work crew faces, with time running out, each member above and below the waterline will work to find Chris and bring him home.
Last Breath is a strange experience in that it’s profoundly thrilling yet also devoid of emotional connection. On a human level, one finds themselves swept up in whether or not Chris is recovered, as well as in the actions taken by Dive Supervisor Craig (Mark Bonnar), and the psychological reaction Duncan Allcock (Woody Harrelson) has in response to his inability to do anything while in the bell. Even if Chris weren’t based on a real person, this is an intense situation as it is, so one does find themselves holding their breath (though this has more to do with Nick Remy Matthews’s and Ian Seabrook’s cinematography, more on that shortly) as we observe the characters go from the terrifying realization of Chris’s situation to the hardened determination to bring Chris home. The issue is that a great deal of Last Breath focuses on Chris and few others, resulting in the characters around him being more avatars than people. The best example of this is Simu Liu’s (Barbie; Kim’s Convenience) Dave who we barely get to know beyond him coming off as a generally cold individual who looks down on Chris, seeing him as someone who doesn’t take the job they do seriously. Liu is right next to Cole (Slaughterhouse Rulez; F9) for the majority of the undersea events and perhaps this is really how Dave was with Chris, but he comes off as so distant that the man doesn’t seem to be in the movie for anything more than to be positioned as an anti-Chris who focuses so much on the job that he dismisses all the reasons why Chris wants to come home. By contrast, we get far more about Harrison’s (The Edge of Seventeen; Seven Psychopaths) Duncan, which enables the impotence he feels to radiate off the screen and onto us. Even as the film pushes outward from the sea and onto the ship, we find ourselves engaged with what Captain Andre Jenson (Cliff Curtis) and Craig do to regain control of the ship between the simultaneous system failure and raging storm to get back to Chris, except we don’t know much about them beyond their respective duties, so it’s difficult to lock in emotionally. We want them to succeed, we want Chris to experience a miracle, both because we’re human and because we’d like this true story to have a happy ending regardless of the unlikelihood; but it would sure be nice to care about their emotional states in the process.
Actor Simu Liu and crew members on the set of LAST BREATH, a Focus Features release. Photo Credit: Jon Borg. © 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Where the audience does feel pulled in and on the edge of our seat is through Matthews’s (Hotel Mumbai) and Seabrook’s (The Rescue) underwater cinematography. It’s critical for the sake of the subgenre that we feel actual tension when someone’s life is on the line, and it’s more than the absence of light that does this. It’s the way in which the co-cinematographers light an underwater shot so that we can observe Chris trying to orient himself and get back to the undersea oil manifold (a large structure of wells used to move oil from the seafloor to a platform in order to collect it), having been thrown off of it post-umbilical break, using only a red flare. It’s a color with a very short reach, so our field of vision is about as contained as Chris’s, therefore we find ourselves feeling as he does in the pitch black of the water around him. It’s one thing to know, to be cognizant, of Chris’s isolation and helplessness, it’s another thing to see it play out before you, with a vast swath of black surrounding him, waiting to swallow him as the flare goes out. the co-cinematographers ensure that we remain in proximity to Chris to understand Cole’s approximation of Chris’s emotional state while also making sure we feel the inaccessibility the rest of the character feel to Chris, too. Smartly, in the absence of the flare, we are able to observe Chris through a remote diving tool that travels with the ship and which, we realize late into the film, is likely the same type of device that captured the footage we see at the start of the film when Parkinson is setting up the concepts and situation we’re about to, well, dive into. It’s black and white and grainy, thereby separating it from the co-cinematographers’ own camerawork, but clear enough for us to understand what the abovesea team could observe. One might think that the lack of clarity would distance the audience, but it actually generates an increase in helplessness as we come to understand that seeing someone doesn’t mean you can help them.
L-R: Actors Simu Liu, Woody Harrelson and Finn Cole with director Alex Parkinson on the set of their film LAST BREATH, a Focus Features release. Photo Credit: Mark Cassar. © 2025 FOCUS FEATURES LLC.
If you’d like to learn more about Seabrook’s work in Last Breath, check out the conversation EoM Partner Noel T. Manning and EoM Senior Interview Thomas Manning had with Seabrook on their program Meet Me at the Movies.
The physical and digital editions of the film include three special features — a two-minute gag reel that shows how the cast and crew worked together during the shoot, a 10-minute making-of featurette titled “Into the Deep: Making Last Breath” that covers elements such as the awareness of the true story the cast possessed (and meeting their real life counter-parts), how Harrelson feels about first-time directors, building the set in the Republic of Malta, and the approach to capturing the undersea events as they transpired with insight provided by cast and crew, and a feature-length commentary track from co-writer/director Parkinson and co-writer/producer David Brooks (The Den; Carved). Considering that this feature began as a documentary co-directed by Parkinson, this commentary track is going to be the place to go to learn more about the adaptation process, why he felt this story required adaptation, and other details that you just won’t find in “Into the Deep.”
Ultimately, Last Breath is a bit of a mixed bag. Not even because the film takes some liberties (changes Chris’s oxygen supply from five minutes to 10), but because the tight runtime of 90-minutes means that it centers on Chris and rushes to get to the incident without building up those around him. Given that the film takes pains to demonstrate what happens post-rescue attempts, meaning that the survival elements make up the bulk of the runtime. Taking more time at the start to establish the characters, help them be defined more than what the performances from the actors offer, would enhance the drama inherent to the tale.
Last Breath Special Features:
- Feature commentary with co-writer/director Alex Parkinson and co-writer/producer David Brooks (1:33:21)
- Into the Deep: Making Last Breath (10:37)
- Gag Reel (2:12)
Available on digital March 18th, 2025.
Available on Peacock April 25th, 2025.
Available on Blu-ray and DVD April 29th, 2025.
For more information, head to the official Focus Features Last Breath webpage.
Final Score: 3 out of 5.
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Categories: Home Release, Home Video, Recommendation, Reviews, streaming
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