Warning: SPOILERS ahead for Last BreathAlex Parkinson’s survival thriller Last Breath tells its story with remarkable realism. Thanks to the wizardry of underwater filming technology and the director’s prior experience making a documentary about its subject, the movie captures the literally breathtaking peril of its theme with the kind of intimacy that few other true-story dramatizations have managed, right up to Last Breath‘s gripping ending. The film covers the real events of September 18, 2012, when saturation diver Chris Lemons was stranded 330 feet underwater in the North Sea with five minutes of oxygen left in his tank.
Lemons was carrying out routine repair work for the company Bibby Offshore, when rough seas suddenly plunged his team’s mission into crisis. The cord carrying Lemons’ oxygen snapped as he and his colleagues made their way back to their submarine vessel, and Lemons was left for ᴅᴇᴀᴅ on the seabed. Parkinson’s movie reenacts this accident and its immediate aftermath with painstaking accuracy, as well as conveying the trauma its protagonists went through with heartfelt performances from Finn Cole, Woody Harrelson, and Simu Liu.
Last Breath Is Based On The True Story Of Chris Lemons’ 2012 Diving Accident
The Movie Depicts How Lemons Was Left At The Bottom Of The Sea Without Oxygen But Survived
Chris Lemons is a real-life saturation diver, who’d already been working alongside his colleagues Duncan Allcock and Dave Yuasa for some time before they set out on a workaday dive in September 2012. Last Breath covers the shocking story of how Lemons somehow survived spending 29 minutes at the bottom of the ocean without any supply of oxygen.
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The thriller’s co-writer and director, Alex Parkinson, was in a privileged position to render the story as faithfully as possible in scripted form because he’d already told it once before. His 2019 documentary about the accident, which is also тιтled Last Breath, received praise for Parkinson’s steady hand at the helm, and for its unflinching depiction of what looked certain to be a fatal deep-sea disaster.
Last Breath Is A Mostly Accurate Retelling Of The True Story
Its Main Plot Threads And Most Of Its Details Really Happened
Parkinson’s 2025 version of Last Breath, which has already garnered acclaim on Rotten Tomatoes, diverges very little from its source material, retaining all the true story’s main threads and most of its details. The events leading up to the accident that nearly killed Lemons are portrayed exactly as they happened in real life, and the movie recreates the rescue scene with almost clinical precision. It draws on real bodycam footage from the divers and vehicles involved, including from Lemons himself, but takes advantage of today’s underwater filmmaking technology to add color and texture to its depiction. If anything, the movie’s visuals make what happened even more vivid for us than the documentary did.
What’s more, Parkinson and his co-writers Mitchell LaFortune and David Brooks are faithful to all aspects of the story, from what Lemons was thinking about the moment he lost consciousness, to how Duncan Allcock revived him. Of course, as with any scripted recreation of a true story, Last Breath does inevitably include certain embellishments for dramatic effect.
How Last Breath Changes The True Story
The Film Recasts Some Characters And Embellishes Certain Details For Dramatic Effect
The most obvious change Last Breath makes to the true story of Chris Lemons’ survival isn’t to do with the drama itself, however. It’s in the casting of its lead actors. The movie sees American actor Woody Harrelson, in one of his best movie roles, play Allcock, and Chinese-Canadian actor Simu Liu play Dave Yuasa. The actors play the characters using their own native accent, which likely makes their performances more naturalistic and affecting. Yet, the real Allcock and Yuasa aren’t from North America. They are both British, with English accents.
Last Breath – Official Trailer
Moreover, to ramp up the tension in the story even further, Last Breath alters some details of the events depicted in its final act. Firstly, in real life, no one had to manually rewire the dynamic positioning system on the divers’ support boat for the system to be reset quickly, as Josef Altin’s character does in the movie. Secondly, the remotely operated vehicle the crew sent down to the seabed to check on Lemons didn’t attempt to pick him up.
Some real-life aspects of the rescue operation are also omitted to increase suspense. For example, Yuasa doesn’t pipe oxygen into Lemons’ diving suit when he reaches him, Lemons doesn’t climb up the ladder into the diving bell himself, as he did in reality. In addition, he waits to see his fiancée, Morag, in person before he tells her what happened, while in actual fact, he told her on the phone as soon as he could, to avoid her finding out from local media.
What Happened To Chris Lemons After His Diving Accident
He Returned To His Life As Normal, Like Nothing Had Happened
One very accurate part of Last Breath is what happened to Chris Lemons after his accident and the condition he was in. Despite being without any oxygen for 29 minutes, he was in good health when he returned to the surface less than an hour after his rescue. The accident appears to have had no lasting effect on Lemons, either physical or psychological. He was able to get married seven months later as planned, and even returned to the spot where he almost died just three weeks after the incident, in October 2012, to finish the job he was ᴀssigned.
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Following Parkinson’s 2019 documentary, Lemons and his colleagues became famous for their extraordinary story, and he’s been asked to recount it in various interviews. His feat of survival is a testament to the exceptional resilience of the human body, although there is no scientific consensus on exactly how he lived for so long without access to oxygen. Last Breath might not give us this answer, but the movie does a compelling job of immersing us in his tale of survival against all odds.
Last Breath
Specifications
- Release Date
- 2025-02-27
- Rating
- PG-13
- Genres
- Thriller (Genre), Drama (Genre)
- Runtime
- 93 minutes
- Cast
- Woody Harrelson (wm-7984217 | Person), Simu Liu (Person), Finn Cole (Person), Cliff Curtis (Person), Djimon Hounsou (Person), Connor Reed (Person), Daithí O’Donnell (wm-710901878 | Person)
- Director
- Alex Parkinson (Person)
- Writers
- Alex Parkinson (Person), David Brooks (Person), Mitchell LaFortune (Person)
- Producers
- Jared Underwood (wm-7421452 | Person), Alastair Burlingham (Person), Danny Mandel (wm-710708257 | Person), Jeremy Plager (wm-710623181 | Person), Anna Mohr-Pietsch (wm-710038279 | Person), Gary Raskin (Person), Stewart Le Marechal (wm-79428857 | Person), Richard Da Costa (wm-79057959 | Person), Andrew C. Robinson (wm-74052708 | Person), Jonny Persey (wm-7481440 | Person), David Brooks (wm-73219281 | Person), Al Morrow (wm-73016133 | Person), Dan Clifton (wm-72194434 | Person), Hal Sadoff (wm-71345288 | Person), Paul Brooks (wm-7739085 | Person), Norman Golightly (wm-7716665 | Person)
