Last Breath: an intense survival story from the ocean depths

Chris Lemons, Duncan Allcock, and David Yuasa are three expert divers who work in one of the most dangerous places in the world: the ocean depths. Their job is to be deep-sea "repairmen," often in extreme conditions hundreds of meters below the surface.

Last Breath begins with the protagonists boarding a large ship in the North Sea, spending some time in a pressurized habitat where they acclimate to a helium-rich atmosphere, before descending in a diving bell where the toughest part of their assignment will begin. The purpose of the mission is to reach the seabed and work directly on the pipelines and systems that run along it. What seemed like a mission like any other ends up getting complicated after an accident that threatens to turn routine into a potentially tragic situation.

Last Breath: every breath counts

An incredible true story that happened in 2012 is the basis of this film, which drags us into one of the most remote corners of the planet, a place inaccessible to most of humanity and where only a few brave, highly qualified experts can set foot. Director Alex Parkinson had already narrated the story in the documentary, co-directed with Richard da Costa, with the same title, and ideally returns "to the scene of the crime" in this feature film, wisely using some insights from the previous work.

The style is very realistic, and the viewer is forcefully drawn into the growing pathos that binds us to the fate of these figures immersed in that remote place, with the classic rule "one for all, all for one" being amply respected in the relative dramatization of the story. Everyone's commitment, whether hundreds of meters below the surface or aboard the ship managing operations, will be fundamental for the successful outcome of events, and the screenplay manages to offer calibrated space to all involved characters, both main and secondary. 

Under the sea, under the sea

An effective mix of tension and claustrophobia characterizes the hour and a half of viewing, with the emotional management living on the sense of anguish related to the fate of one of them and the race against time to ensure oxygen supplies do not run out before help arrives. A full-fledged survival movie, with shots that catapult us directly to the bottom, in the name of a raw and necessary realism to make the verisimilitude a compelling element of the unfolding story.

Difficult choices, which can mean life or death, in the hands of fallible but deeply human figures, united by this common just cause. The numerous and diverse cast manages to bring credible figures to life, with the three main roles entrusted to Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu, and Finn Cole, who are good at coexisting with each other without trying to steal the scene. For a film that remains deeply firm on the tone of the story and its fidelity to what actually happened, now finally known to the general public thanks to the film itself.