‘Last Breath’: Diving Thriller Will Take Your Breath Away

The highly engrossing ‘Last Breath’ features the cool-headed, ‘right stuff’ of Navy pilots and any crew of men who nonchalantly do dangerous jobs for a living.

(L–R) Chris Lemons (Finn Cole), Duncan Allcock (Woody Harrelson), and Dave "Vulcan" Yuasa (Simu Liu), in the dive bell in "Last Breath." Focus Features

PG-13 | 1h 33m | Thriller, Adventure | 2025

“Last Breath” is the true story of a Scottish saturation diving crew in the North Sea. On Sept. 18, 2012, their routine maintenance operation on an oil-well manifold went mind bogglingly wrong.

Deep-sea diver Finn Cole (Chris Lemons) describes saturation diving to his fiancée: “It’s like going to space, but underwater.” “Why does that not comfort me?” she wonders aloud.

Saturation divers are required to live in specially pressurized capsules aboard the mothership for multiple days in order to acclimatize to the deep sea pressure, before descending to the ocean floor. It’s one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet. Why? For starters, once prepped to dive, if you were to leave that capsule for any reason—say, sleepwalking—your organs would literally explode. Hence, the team members are locked in for the duration. Better not be claustrophobic.

Duncan Allcock (Woody Harrelson) in the dive bell, in "Last Breath." Focus Features

Jobs that normally await divers on the bottom of the sea have to do with maintenance of the underwater pipes that house power cables. If one of them was to get damaged, whole countries could lose electricity. Obviously, a humdrum job in this extreme setting can turn deadly in a heartbeat. “Last Breath” is the story of one such actual massive marine mishap.

Bad Weather, Big Waves

The Topaz, the commercial engineering ship conducting the dive, had three divers descend during 18-foot swells and raging 35-knot winds.

Commercial engineering ship, the Topaz, heading out to the North Sea, in "Last Breath." Focus Features

Duncan Allcock (Woody Harrelson) stays behind in the dive bell (also know as a personnel transfer capsule, or submersible decompression chamber) while the two others do the dive. One is the above-mentioned Finn Cole, the other is Dave “Vulcan” Yuasa (Simu Liu), his more experienced colleague.

Yuasa is nicknamed “the Vulcan” because of his hyper-stoic, Spock-like lack of emotion. They exit the dive bell, jump off the platform, and drift down to where the ocean pressure is 10 times atmospheric pressure, the temperature marginally above freezing, and light non-existent.

Computer Crash

When the computer in charge of locking the ship in position above the divers fails, an instantaneous, life-threatening nightmare is born. When the ship immediately begins to drift as a result, the divers are forced to chase after the diving bell, which is being rapidly towed away.

But there’s a snag: Chris’ 90-meter umbilical line, which provides oxygen, communication, and heat, catches on a submerged metal platform—and snaps.

Film crew cameraman and stunt divers shooting on location in "Last Breath." Focus Features

With only five minutes worth of air in his reserve tanks, Duncan, Vulcan, the first mate, engineer, navigator, and captain battle the raging storm (the ship’s controls have to be flipped to manual) and engage in life-and-death problem-solving to find and rescue Chris.

Highly Suspenseful

Utilizing talking-head interviews, black-box recordings, camcorder footage, and seamlessly integrated reconstructions, “Last Breath” sets the scene by panning around the pressurized capsule. This particular milieu is a combination of submarine and locker room culture. It’s also got the extreme, laid-back, matter-of-factness and gallows humor of Navy pilots, expedition climbers, police precincts in gangland neighborhoods, and any crew of men who appear to nonchalantly do extremely dangerous jobs for a living.

(L–R) Chris Lemons (Finn Cole), Duncan Allcock (Woody Harrelson), and Dave "Vulcan" Yuasa (Simu Liu), in the dive bell in "Last Breath." Focus Features

An amusing touch is that the filmmakers had to alter the voices. It would have been extremely difficult to maintain the requisite atmosphere of gravitas had the crew members spoken realistically to each other. Meaning, while in saturation, divers breathe a mixture of oxygen and helium which is designed to prevent pressure-related maladies—the unintended side effect of which is that it will also cause men with bass voices to sound like Donald Duck.

The main course of this fairly potent, sweat-beaded sub-sea thriller is the race-against-time aspect. The human brain can only last five minutes without oxygen—at 10 minutes, coma and lasting brain damage are inevitable. Chris lies on the bottom of the world, without oxygen, for 29 minutes, so it soon became obvious to all involved that this would be a matter of body retrieval.

Promotional poster for "Last Breath." Focus Features

There’s some narrative sleight of hand on the part of director Alex Parkinson, and the film unfortunately focuses a bit too much on the rescue logistics instead of the psychology of the incident.

The Right Stuff

As mentioned, “Last Breath” is a forensic study of “right stuff” professionalism in the face of a potentially lethal disaster. It’s deepened by a rich cast of supporting characters, including Lemons’ actual fiancée in Scotland, and Woody Harrelson’s much-loved emotional dive leader and mentor.

Dave "Vulcan" Yuasa (Simu Liu, center) and another crew member in "Last Breath." Focus Features

Vulcan would appear to most stereotypically embody the diver’s version of the right stuff. Tom Wolfe described the Navy pilot’s right stuff (what it takes to be a pilot) in his book of the same name:

“A man should have the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his hide on the line and then have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it back in the last yawning moment--and then to go up again the next day, and the next day, and every next day.”

Vulcan, the stone-cold diving pro said, “I wasn’t particularly upset about Chris. ---- happens.”

Sometimes, so do miracles.

Promotional poster for "Last Breath." Focus Features

‘Last Breath’ Director: Alex Parkinson Starring: Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu, Finn Cole MPAA Rating: PG-13 Running Time: 1 hour, 33 minutes Release Date: Feb. 28, 2025 Rating: 3 1/2 stars out of 5

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