Last Breath
Alex Parkinson, UK, USA, 2025o
Chris Lemons is a professional diver at the beginning of his career. His teammates for the next job far off the coast of Scotland are the experienced Duncan, a father figure to Chris, and the professional but aloof Dave. No sooner has their support vessel reached the dive site than a storm brews. Nevertheless, the three men descend into the depths with the diving bell. At first, everything goes according to plan, but suddenly parts of the ship's equipment fail.
Tens of thousands of kilometers of oil and gas pipelines have been laid in the oceans. They are maintained by deep-sea divers who are connected to their compression bells via a bundle of cables. If this umbilical cord is cut for any reason, the divers have oxygen for ten minutes. The thriller Last Breath is about such an incident, which really happened. That's all it's about, and that's fine. We see three of these guys (Finn Cole as the rookie, Simu Liu as the aloof pro, and the proven charismatic Woody Harrelson as the team leader) setting out on a dive off the Scottish coast in stormy seas. We experience how much this dangerous work requires: a powerful high-tech ship with sophisticated steering and stabilization systems, half a dozen compression chambers on the lower deck, each with a team of three, buttons and cables everywhere, communication systems, and claustrophobia like in a spaceship. And we learn how fragile this complex machinery is. A few powerful waves, the failure of an internet connection: the mother ship drifts away, pulling the diving capsule with it and severing the line to one of the men on the seabed. The rest is breathless tension, but not whipped up by the actors or the director. In front of and behind the camera, everyone keeps their nerves and simply does what is necessary. You see every move, live with the man in distress and his helpers on high alert. How long can someone survive at this depth and in this cold without oxygen? How lonely and desperate does it feel for the man affected and for those around him? Films like the latest Mission Impossible episode tell us fairy tales about such things. Last Breath shows how it really is. There's no question which version is more gripping.
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