Because Hollyweird believes people don't want to watch documentaries about true events unless they're retold with movie stars we're constantly getting movies like Last Breath, a retelling of the 2019 documentary of the same name about the frantic scramble to save a lost diver in the North Sea.
Finn Cole (Peaky Blinders) stars as Chris Lemons, a saturation diver working out of Aberdeen, Scotland. He's engaged to Morag (Bobby Rainsbury, nothing you've heard of), who worries about his dangerous job (foreshadowing!), but he promises to come back to her (ruh-roh!). He sets out to sea with his teammates - Duncan Allcock (Woody Harrelson, Cheers), his good friend and mentor who's due to be forced into retirement after this rotation (if this was a cop movie...), and David Yuasa (Simu Liu, Shang-Chi), a no nonsense, stern pro who's leery of the less-experienced Finn.
Since their job is to repair pipeline equipment on the bottom of the sea at depths over 300 foot, their rotations last four weeks in which they live in a cramped tube, pressurized to the depths they'll work, and then at the end spend four days depressurizing to surface pressure. If they were to come up from the bottom directly to the surface, their cells would explode, so if anyone has an emergency, help is days away.
The crew head down to a gas manifold on the sea floor in a diving bell suspended from the mothership. From there, Chris and David are to dive to the work area tethered to umbilical hoses carrying air, heated water (it's nearly freezing down there), communications, and electricity (it's dark down there). Up on the surface, a large storm is battering the ship which normally wouldn't be a problem except the system that holds the ship on station with thruster motors totally fails, setting the ship adrift.
Knowing they're going to be swept along by their umbilicals, the divers scramble to get on top of the manifold, but Chris's gets snagged on the structure. With no slack to disentangle it, David realizes it's about to snap and orders Chris to switch to his backup air supply. The umbilical snaps and David is pulled away with the ship and Chris is left behind with only 10 minutes of air.
The race is then on to get back to rescue Chris before his air runs out and while the ship and dangling bell and diver are moving away, they are able to send a robot drone to the manifold where they find Chris, but he's unconscious and twitching involuntarily from oxygen deprivation. It then becomes a matter of if there is any point to retrieving him after he's been without air for as long as it's becoming.
Since we know Hollyweird wouldn't make a movie about a guy who died in a workplace accident, the tension of the situation is a bit diffused though it's still a harrowing ride to see just how inventive everyone got under pressure. If you liked Apollo 13 or The Martian and the whole "let's work the problem" mentality of those films, you'll appreciate what's shown here on a far smaller scale.
Co-writer/director Alex Parkinson directed the original documentary and this appears to be his first narrative feature. His familiarity with the event transfers to a feeling of verisimilitude (hi, RMB!) to the staging of this recreation. But even at a brief (for these days) 93 minutes, it feels padded and a bit flat with soap opera aspects.
The original documentary isn't streaming on any services now, so it's not available to compare, but for a small-scale, taut fight for survival flick, Last Breath may have you holding yours at times.
Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.
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