‘Last Breath’ Review: Idea Over Execution Creates A Mundane Disaster Thriller
Alex Parkinson is known for directing various documentaries, from nature to tragic events. Six years ago, Parkinson directed the documentary under the same title, Last Breath, which told the story of a diver trapped with no oxygen for several minutes.
A time period when anyone would have been declared clinically brain dead short of a miracle. So when Hollywood comes around and wants to bring the story to the big screen, they decide to get the same director from the documentary to do the theatrical release.
That decision was a mistake.
Last Breath is set around a group of deep-sea engineers who work one of the most dangerous jobs in the world at the bottom of the North Sea. The trio is called to repair an energy pipeline 100 meters below the surface level.
Duncan Allcock (Woody Harrelson), David Yuasa (Simu Liu), and Chris Lemons (Finn Cole) are working on the pipeline when a massive storm causes the ship to which they’re tethered to become unstable, forcing the trio to evacuate. As Duncan and David make it back, Chris is trapped. His tether is snapped, causing him to fall even deeper into the ocean with a complete lack of oxygen, which for any other diver would have meant certain death.
Refusing to give up, the crew comes up with a last-ditch emergency effort to retrieve Chris and hopes to save his life before the decompression and lack of oxygen take him out. The cinematic version of Last Breath falls short because you have a documentary director who is not experienced in directing what should be a high-octane action movie.
As a result, the filmmakers believed they could balance his inexperience by adding three screenwriters to make efforts easier for Parkinson. The problem is that you have a couple of screenwriters who aren’t very experienced themselves. So what you have is a movie that is the cinematic equivalent of the blind leading the blind, with a couple of notable name actors trying to make the best out of the limited palette they are presented.
Harrelson and Liu are the two biggest names in the movie but aren’t given much to roll with as they aren’t the focus. The film is roughly 90 minutes long. The first 25 minutes do a good job of setting the stage for the conflict. But when disaster finally strikes, the film feels like it’s progressing to the next plot point rather than telling a story.
Several years ago, Mark Wahlberg and Peter Berg came together for a series of films that were entitled Doc Busters, about real-life events that were done on an entertaining cinematic level. The biggest sell for the movie was the cinematography that encapsulates what it felt like to be trapped in the suffocating, deepest, darkest depths of the ocean.
The tricky part of a rescue of this caliber is the fact that due to the elevation, even when Chris is rescued, he has to be kept underwater for three days to avoid dying from decompression symptoms. Last Breath does not match the energy of films such as Deepwater Horizon and Patriots Day. The best way to describe Last Breath is flat.
The movie is the cinematic equivalent of drinking a flat Dr. Pepper. On paper, it is a Dr. Pepper, but it just doesn’t taste right. Parkinson achieves bringing authenticity to the story outside of the fact that none of the actors in the movie look like their real-life counterparts. The movie has the same level of excitement as the documentary did, which is not what you want from a blockbuster action movie.
There’s a reason why this film took nearly two years to find a distributor who decided to dump the film out in a sea of limited-release movies. Last Breath isn’t going to win any Academy Awards any time soon. However, there should be an award given to a film that can take the story of a man who miraculously survived being at the bottom of the ocean for almost 30 minutes with no oxygen and make that story mundane.
Last Breath is a textbook example of idea versus execution. No matter how good an idea may be, the execution of said idea is what makes or breaks a story.
NEXT: ‘Mickey 17’ Review: As Bloated, Long, And Self-Indulgent As You Have Heard, And Maybe Worse
PROS
- Underwater Cinematography
- Solid Acting
CONS
- Flat Action Thriller
- Lack of Directing Experience
- Lack of Screenwriting Experience
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