Into the Deep: Last Breath and the Unshakable Value of Human Life

If you’re a documentary aficionado, the title Last Breath might sound familiar to you. Back in 2019, there was a documentary with that name about a harrowing deep-sea rescue, and now, one of the directors behind it has turned the story into a feature film. I haven’t seen that documentary myself, but it was generally well received (according to Rotten Tomatoes), so I was interested to see this fictionalized version of the tale. Granted, I wasn’t sure if it would be any good, but the premise sounded interesting enough, so I decided to give this movie a shot.
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Last Breath was directed and co-written by Alex Parkinson, and it stars Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu, and Finn Cole as Duncan, Dave, and Chris, three men with one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet. They’re saturation divers, which means they travel to the bottom of the sea to work on undersea pipelines.

On this particular dive, the trio head to the bottom of the North Sea, but soon after they begin working, something terrible happens. The ship that lowers them down gets caught in a horrible storm, and Chris’s connection to the diving vessel snaps. He gets stranded 1,000 feet below sea level, and his teammates have to do everything possible to rescue him before it’s too late.

As you can probably guess from that plot synopsis, Last Breath is a thrill-a-minute pressure cooker, but it doesn’t start out that way. The film actually spends about a half hour establishing its major players and introducing us to their harrowing profession, and that time is supposed to help viewers forge an emotional connection with these characters before the story begins in earnest.

Unfortunately though, it doesn’t entirely work. To be fair, the three lead stars do an admirable job with the material they’re given. Finn Cole is the charismatic nice guy you can’t help but like, Simu Liu exudes a silent strength that shines despite his sparse dialogue, and Woody Harrelson has the characteristically playful, almost whimsical demeanor that makes him such a beloved movie star.

But despite those solid performances, Last Breath still struggles on this front. The film just doesn’t develop its main trio beyond their one-line descriptions, so all three of these men end up feeling a bit more like cliched stereotypes than real, flesh-and-blood human beings. Those thinly drawn characterizations make it difficult for us to care about these guys, so the story has to work extra hard to get us invested.

In most films, that flaw would be nearly fatal, but somehow, Last Breath manages to overcome it. Once Chris’s connection snaps, this movie becomes the nonstop thrill ride we all expected. Just about everything that can go wrong does go wrong, so Duncan, Dave, and the ship’s crew have to pull out all the stops to rescue their lost comrade.

I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t entirely sure if director Alex Parkinson would be able to maintain that tension long enough to sustain an entire feature film, but he somehow pulls it off. The suspense lasts for about forty-five minutes, and for almost that entire time, you’ll be on the edge of your seat.

Last Breath is a pretty impressive piece of nail-biting filmmaking, and it even manages to overcome the biggest hurdle a movie like this has to face. Since it’s based on a true story, you’re already pretty sure Chris is going to make it out alive no matter how grim things get, and that could’ve easily sapped the thrills of all their power.

Alex Parkinson needed to find a way to make you believe Chris’s fate was genuinely uncertain, and for my money, he succeeded. Granted, I was still pretty sure the guy was going to survive, but there were a few times when my confidence started to waver a bit. I found myself wondering if this story was going to end up being a tragedy, and…well, I’ll let you watch the movie yourself to find out what really happens.

Suffice it to say that Last Breath is a truly effective thriller, but it’s not just an empty exercise in deep-sea tension. There’s a point to this story, and the way I see it, it’s all about the value of human life. When the characters realize that one of their companions is in mortal danger, you can almost feel the concern oozing out of them. It’s evident in the way they look and the way they talk, so you know they genuinely value this man’s life.

What’s more, they can’t rescue the guy without putting their own lives at risk, but they do it anyway. He’s that important, and if you’re a Christian, you can’t help but think of Jesus’ parable about leaving the ninety-nine sheep to go look for the one that was lost. Granted, it’s not a perfect fit, but Last Breath perfectly embodies the parable’s teaching that we’re valuable as individuals, not just as parts of a larger whole.

There’s even a scene that literally celebrates Chris’s life, and in a total coincidence, my allergies flared up and my eyes began to water during that touching moment. In a world where abortion, the death penalty, and a whole host of other anti-life practices are so dishearteningly prevalent, it’s just really refreshing to see a film that so clearly shines a light on the often unpopular truth that human life matters. It’s a message our culture desperately needs to hear, so despite struggling a bit with its characters, Last Breath still gets a thumbs up from me.