The port city of Aberdeen, Scotland, is indeed a lovely place to live. And that’s where Chris and his fiancée, Morag, plan to spend many happy years together. She is a teacher, while he is a saturation deep-sea diver.
That “saturation” part means Chris works with a maintenance crew that goes so far down in the ocean’s dangerous depths—sometimes as deep as 1000 feet down to maintain miles of fuel pipes that run along the ocean floor—that he must be treated with pressurized gas before each lengthy dive.
Of course, it’s the dangerous side of things that make Morag consistently worry. Does he really have to risk his life repeatedly in the crushing depths just to make a living? Couldn’t he find something on the dry, sunny surface that he could do?
Chris kisses his bride-to-be and laughs off her fears. “It’s just like going into outer space, except in the opposite direction,” he chuckles.
After a beat, she replies “Is that supposed to reassure me?”
Let’s face it, Morag has a point.
Even though it’s all becoming second nature to young Chris—after all, he works with an experienced, dedicated crew—accidents do happen. And sometimes storms at sea create unpredictable problems for the ship far above on the water’s surface.
Sometimes the thick umbilical cables that connect the divers to oxygen and diving bell communications can tangle or even snap. Sometimes the power goes out, and the ocean floor becomes a pit of ink-black nothingness.
And sometimes all of those things happen at once, leaving a stranded diver with nothing but minutes of oxygen in his diving suit’s emergency back-up.
That’s when an entire crew must do all they can to fight the ocean, fight the storms, fight the failures, and desperately try to save an endangered crewmate.
In this case, that endangered soul is a guy named Chris.
Last Breath definitely illustrates the dangerous aspects of deep-sea maintenance projects like the one this story is focused on. It praises the men and women involved and highlights their dedication. As a whole, the crew members give their all to rescue a mate.
One diver, in particular, risks his life to rescue another. After the underwater struggle, that diver pulls out a picture of his family to look at with tears in his eyes—reassessing the blessings he has.
We see a young couple being married in a church.
It’s implied that Chris and Morag live together before marriage. They embrace and kiss a few times.
[Note: Spoilers are contained in this section.]
A three-man crew is sent down 300 feet in a diving bell despite the raging storm on the ocean surface. And then the divers—linked by umbilical cables—descend to the ocean floor. In the midst of that, the ship’s computer-controlled stabilizers all fail. That means that the ship is pushed by the waves; the divers panic and try to get up the diving bell. One of the umbilical cables snags and snaps, and Chris is left with just 10 minutes of oxygen.
We later see Chris unconscious and spasming from lack of oxygen. Two divers are nearly crushed by a diving bell platform. A diver strains and slips, trying to pull his unconscious crewmate to safety. And shipmates risk their lives trying to control the ship in the massive storm on the surface.
We’re also told that if the saturated crewmembers are exposed to the surface without a four-day depressurization, their bodily organs could literally explode. The ship’s captain refuses to drop an anchor for fear of rupturing a large fuel pipe on the ocean’s floor.
After 29 minutes without oxygen, a crewman notes that it’s no longer a rescue, but a body recovery. A crewmate flashes back to another deep-sea recovery project he was a part of. And we see a drowned man’s corpse.
Last Breath includes one f-word and four s-words, along with a single use each of “h—,” “d–n,” and a misuse of God’s name.
We’re not given many details, Last Breath shows us some kind of special, pressurized gas being pumped loudly into the diving crew’s sealed quarters to saturate them for the days-long dive in front of them.
The diving bell chief, Duncan, jokes a few times about his age and bowel movements.
You’d be forgiven if you watched this movie and thought that it felt as lean and deliberate as a documentary. That’s likely because director Alex Parkinson already told this true story in documentary form back in 2019, and he’s now transformed it into a tense and emotional feature film.
That, however, isn’t this movie’s takeaway. Rather, you leave the theater thinking about the pulse-pounding dangers of the deep … and the value of human life.
Let’s face it: We live in a time when life can sometimes feel cheap. We regularly see movies and news reports that suggest people are as disposable as dropped popcorn on a sticky floor. But Last Breath makes us gasp a bit and wonder how much we would risk or sacrifice or agonize if someone near us were in great danger. That’s something well worth considering.
For that matter, it’s a thought worth sharing with younger family members, too. Unfortunately, Last Breath makes that sharing part a bit difficult thanks to the unnecessary inclusion of rough language that parents definitely wouldn’t want repeated around the dinner table.
If you want to brave the perils and the film’s infrequent foul-mouthedness minus the story’s sole f-bomb, however, gather your young divers and exit the theater before the real-world recordings roll during the film credits.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
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