Last Breath (2025) is directed by Alex Parkinson, who also wrote the script alongside Mitchell LaFortune and David Brooks. It stars Finn Cole, Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu, Mark Bonnar, Cliff Curtis, MyAnna Buring, Josef Altin, and Bobby Rainsbury. Based on a true story, the film follows Chris Lemons (Cole), a relatively new deep-sea diver who is assigned to a job alongside two seasoned veterans – hot-shot diver, Dave Yuasa (Liu), and their aging supervisor, Duncan Allock (Harrelson). When disastrous circumstances trap Chris hundreds of feet below the surface, Dave, Duncan, and various members of their ship’s crew are forced to band together in order to find and ultimately save their colleague before he runs out of oxygen.

Although the film features exactly the kinds of characters the audience has come to expect from the uplifting, based-on-a-true-story subgenre, the cast ultimately delivers some sound performances. Without the natural acting skill on display, these characters would be nothing but laughably cliche. Cole has a naturally likable attitude, but other than that, he’s severely underdeveloped. During the first act, the only two things we really learn about him are that he loves diving and his fiancée. These details are intended to breed empathy for the character, but ultimately fall flat due to a lack of originality and nuance. This is only amplified by the fact that after the first act, he essentially becomes a stagnant character. This eliminates any would-be development throughout the second half, which ultimately diminishes what little attachment we have to the character. There’s nothing more unoriginal than a survival story focusing on a character who constantly has near-death visions of their beloved wife, but that’s all we get here. The idea that “love conquers all” is just far too cheesy for my taste. When the climax rolled around, I found myself mostly indifferent about his fate. 

Unfortunately, these absurdly cliché characterizations also extend to the co-leads. Liu plays the “best of the best” hotshot diver character who’s immediately cold towards Chris simply because he’s the new guy. It’s immediately clear that he’ll eventually change his attitude, but that’s kind of the exact issue. His arc is painfully predictable and one that the audience has seen before in countless films of varying subgenres. 

Woody Harrelson is capable but likewise struggles with his stock character—a savvy veteran on the verge of retirement who refuses to let his final job end in tragedy. The character lacks any compelling or original traits and, at best, feels like a more serious, aquatic version of Murtaugh from Lethal Weapon (1987). “Damn, I was two days from shore leave.”

Despite the unoriginal characters, the movie provides just enough tension to satisfy less-than-picky viewers. From the moment the action starts to pick up the pace, the film does a great job of shifting the audience’s expectations regarding whether things will end in a miracle or tragedy. Unfortunately, the script chooses the more predictable of the two outcomes. I get that the script is kind of handcuffed to the real-life story, but if the true events aren’t that interesting, why make a movie about them in the first place? This question becomes even more relevant when considering that director Alex Parkinson made a 2019 documentary likewise called Last Breath that focuses on the same events. To round things out, the pitch black underwater setting doesn’t leave much room for visually compelling set pieces. Why make a cinematic version of these events when the setting inherently lacks any cinematic (or even visible) backdrops and/or set pieces? I get taking a more documentarian approach to the subject matter, but it feels like trying to hammer down a bent nail when considering a documentary version already exists (by the same director, nonetheless).

Overall, this is a completely inoffensive, based-on-a-true-story survival story that will undoubtedly satisfy most casual audiences with its swift 93-minute runtime. That being said, anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the genre will roll their eyes at the endless, lazy cliches. As for the technical side of things, it’s well-shot and edited. The problem is, this doesn’t come close to making up for the film’s general lack of originality. I won’t tell you not to watch it, but I am confident you’ll forget about it pretty quickly. C