Last Breath is an anxiety-inducing thriller about a rescue mission battling a race against time to save a worker before it becomes too late.

Apologies if this isn’t coherent–there were more dehumanizing attacks on America’s transgender population on Wednesday night. It’s seriously infuriating and impacting my headspace and focus. But with that out of the way, I’m going to try and discuss the film.

What’s there to say? Last Breath is only 92 minutes long. Audiences will be in and out of the theater rather quickly. However, I did manage to look at my watch more than a few times than I expected but to be fair, my headspace has been rather off since January 20 for the aforementioned reasons. Your own experience might be different–to each their own.

Chris Lemons (Finn Cole), Dave Yuasa (Simu Liu), and Duncan Allcock (Woody Harrelson) were supposed to have a simple saturation diving mission to the bottom of the sea floor to do some repair work. A storm brewing in the North Sea has an unfortunate impact on their repair work, cutting it short. But as two divers prepare to return, one gets part of their cable stuck, forcing them to depend on ten minutes of oxygen. It soon becomes an all-hand-on-deck rescue mission between those on the shop above the surface and the expert deep-sea divers below. It’s a real race against both the elements and time in this fight for survival.

It was as much a storm in as much as it was a computer error on the ship. Because of this, Chris’s cable was severed and he lost all use of oxygen, electricity, and communications. It wasn’t only Dave and Duncan racing against time to save Chris but their shipmates above had to do their job in getting the computers working again.

The repair expedition-turned-rescue mission took place back in 2012.In 2019, filmmaker Alex Parkinson teamed up with Richard da Costa on a documentary also named Last Breath. This documentary utilized archival footage, audio, reconstruction, and interviews in bringing their story to the screen. Most surprisingly, the documentary is two minutes shorter than the narrative feature. I haven’t seen it but it’s currently available on digital retailers. One wonders if Peacock will license the film when this version of Last Breath makes its way to the app after the theatrical run. Talk about a double dose of anxiety!

If you want to add on some more anxiety, the diving in Last Breath is completely authentic. Nothing about is fake, which probably was a contributing factor in continually checking my watch. It’s just too much anxiety for an hour and a half film!

DIRECTOR: Alex Parkinson
SCREENWRITERS: Mitchell LaFortune and Alex Parkinson & David Brooks
CAST: Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu, Finn Cole, and Cliff Curtis, Mark Bonnar, Myanna Buring, Josef Altin, Bobby Rainsbury, Connor Reed

Focus Features will release Last Breath in theaters on February 28, 2028. Grade: 3.5/5

Please subscribe to Solzy on Buttondown and visit Dugout Dirt.