In 2019 director Alex Parkinson co-directed the documentary Last Breath alongside Richard da Costa. Now he has stepped behind the camera once again to make a feature film about this tense and unbelievable true story once again titled Last Breath. Could this film capture the same tension of this harrowing rescue and accident to life, or will it sink to the bottom of the ocean forever?

 

Last Breath follows seasoned deep-sea divers as they battle the raging elements to rescue their crewmate trapped hundreds of feet below the ocean’s surface. The films feature a great cast including Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu, Finn Cole, Cliff Curtis, and Mark Bonnar.  

 

The trailers for this film looked intense and with this cast was eager to check it out. I am glad I hadn’t seen this documentary so that I could head into the story and its outcome fresh because it does a great job building the tension and keeping you fully invested until the very end despite a slow start.

 

There is nothing wrong with the initial set up and in fact does a good job getting all the characters and information you need in place before heading into the depths of the ocean. Maybe it was the anticipation of what’s to come, but I struggled a bit to really get invested. Thankfully that was short lived because the film delivers exactly what is promised. From the moment they get underwater the tension starts to build even before things go wrong and you fully realize the dangers of what they do.

 

Once tragedy strikes the race is on to rescue the fallen diver before it becomes a body recovery. The results and how it all plays out would be wholly unbelievable in its finale had it not been a true story. They didn’t waste a lot of time on the back and forth that films like this usually do and instead let it all play out underwater and above water, so you get the full effect of the rescue in all its details.

 

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