Set in the North Sea off the coast of Scotland, “Last Breath” depicts a harrowing real-life accident in 2012 which stranded three deep-sea divers over 300 feet below the sea surface in freezing, dark water. Woody Harrelson plays Duncan, a gruff team leader of the divers who mentors Chris, the newest member of the team who worked up the ranks to earn a spot on a difficult mission.
The divers are known as “saturation divers,” who work at extreme depths for extended periods of time. In order to do that, the divers live in pressurized chambers on the ship so they don’t have to acclimate for each single dive. Instead, the divers go back and forth between the extreme depths in a diving bell from their on-ship pods for weeks at a time.
For this mission, the divers were dispatched to repair an underwater gas line at the bottom of the North Sea during a strong storm. The mission quickly goes wrong when the divers’ ship loses its Dynamic Positioning System (DPS) and stabilization when the ship is battered by large swells. As the ship drifts, the divers’ umbilical cords are strained, forcing them to abort. The cords provide oxygen, power, and warm water for their suits, so they are literally lifelines. One of the cords becomes entangled on a work platform and as the ship continues to move away, the cord severs from one of the divers. The diver quickly shifts to an emergency oxygen tank, but it only holds about five to ten minutes of air. While the other two divers are safely in the diving bell, they are helpless to rescue the other diver for almost thirty minutes as the ship’s crew attempts to fix the DPS to re-stabilize the ship and re-align it over the gas manifold.
The initial scenes are executed with an engrossing combination of action and suspense, immersing the audience in the details of the crazy profession and other-worldly experience of life deep beneath the sea surface.
So, on my ski trail rating system, “Last Breath” earns my intermediate BLUE ski trail rating. The camera work and technical aspects of the film are outstanding. Use of archival footage adds eerie tension and realism to the dramatic retelling of the “truth is stranger than fiction” incident. However, like the accident’s victim, the film runs out of oxygen as the last act limps to the finish line.
“Last Breath” is playing in theaters with an efficient run-time of ninety-three minutes. “Last Breath” is rated PG-13 for language and extreme separation anxiety.
