Last Breath (2025) – Review

Quick Thoughts 

• Grade – B 
• I love watching capable people being capable.
• 93 minutes!
• Between Murina, Whale Rider, The Meg 1 & 2, Deep Rising, Virus, Avatar: The Way of Water, True Spirit, and The Fountain – Cliff Curtis loves acting in water movies.
• Simu Liu is the MVP.
• It’s an authentic feeling experience that’s free of unnecessary drama. It’s nice. 

In 2012, a saturation diver named Chris Lemons was left stranded on the bottom of the North Sea with only 5 minutes of breathable gas in his backup tanks after his umbilical cable (which supplied him with oxygen) was severed due to bad luck and bad weather. Stuck 330 feet below the surface, Lemons laid on top of the submerged platform he was working on with little chance of being saved. What’s wild is that Lemons spent 30 minutes under the water before he was rescued by fellow divers and he survived without any long term effects to his brain or body. It’s a wild tale that becomes more exceptional when you learn that scientists and doctors still can’t exactly pinpoint why Lemons is still alive. It’s a great story that was covered in a 2019 documentary (of the same name) and is now being retold with an A-list cast. 

Directed and co-written by Alex Parkinson who directed the 2019 documentary, Last Breath strives for authenticity with its handheld camerawork by Nick Remy Matthews (Hotel Mumbai, I.S.S. – he loves shooting movies featuring people stuck in places), that puts the focus on all the small details inside the gigantic boats that house the divers who repair underwater pipelines. It’s a world I know nothing about, and Parkinson does a fine job of showcasing how intricate and dangerous the world of underwater pipeline maintenance can be. Production designer Grant Montgomery deserves praise for believably recreating the pressurized cabins that house the divers and allow them to remain under pressure for weeks at a time while working in absurd depths. These cabins allow the divers to depressurize only once (which takes days) at the end of each job, which allows them to work more efficiently. Working as a saturation diver is one of the world’s most dangerous jobs, and Last Breath (2025) does a fine job of seemingly getting the small details right which greatly adds to the overall experience. 

The best thing that can be said about the 2025 film is that it keeps the story simple and dedicates its breezy 93-minute running time to faithfully recreating the undersea rescue without adding too much superfluous drama. Actors Finn Cole, Woody Harrelson (and his pillow) and Simu Liu are excellent and they create a likable work family who would believably put their lives at risk to save each other. I’ve become a big fan of Liu after watching Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Jackpot! Barbie, and Arthur the King, so I enjoyed watching Liu play a no-nonsense diver whose physicality and professionalism help save his coworker. 

Finn Cole also does a solid job of creating a character you want to be saved, and his relationships with Woody Harrelson’s mentor characters feels real. It’s a simple story and there isn’t a lot to pad out the running time, so a chunk of the film is dedicated to the boat’s crew who try (and succeed) in navigating the rough waters to get back to Lemons. Cliff Curtis (Murina, Whale Rider, The Meg, Deep Rising, Virus, Avatar: The Way of Water – he loves acting in water movies), Mark Bonnar, MyAnna Buring, and Josef Altin are solid as the boat’s crew, and the time spent with them never feels unnecessary or intended to pad the running time. 

Filmed in Malta, which is currently the hotbed for productions in need of a large water tank (Gladiator II, Deep Fear, Last Voyage of the Demeter, and Shark Bait all shot there), the handsomely made production looks great because Parkinson and his producers knew exactly where to spend the money. The underwater sets look believably murky and the underwater photography from Ian Seabrook (great name for an underwater DP) is excellent as it manages to recreate the isolation of being stuck deep in the ocean. 

Final thoughts – I love well-crafted films about capable people being capable.