Today’s film is a win for the “People with Thankless Jobs” crowd. Did you know there were pipelines that stretch all over the seabed of the world’s oceans? Film says there are 20,000 miles of them. And get this: sometimes, they need repairs. Saturation Divers submerge to depths of 1,000 feet below sea level to make such repairs. They’re so far down, it takes them four full days to decompress after a mission, successful or otherwise.
There’s a mission you don’t want to screw up, especially if you’re gonna spend four days in a box at the end of it, huh? You think your boss can’t find you? Good luck. This is a job so hazardous, I question the need for it, and, yet, it’s not firefighting or policing; there are no community thanks or parades for Saturation Divers, and there probably never will be.
This particular team of divers includes Duncan (Woody Harrelson), Dave (Simu Liu), and Chris (Finn Cole). All are veteran divers; they know the protocol; they know the risk. The latter is considerable; you can’t call “9-1-1” from the ocean floor.
I think we can all see where this one is going.
Harrelson and Liu are the name actors, so you just know they’re not going to be the ones unconscious on the ocean floor. I mean, somebody has to act here. This is a simple story with a simple setup and -literally- an ocean’s worth of atmosphere. They gave Chris a fiancé so that we’d 
have something to concern ourselves with other than rescue. This is based on a true story, so the details may or may not be true here. They don’t really matter, to be honest.
Do we care if Chris lives? We do.
Do we care about the details of the rescue? We do.
Do we care about anything else in the film? Wellllllllllllllll ….
Last Breath is a fairly paint-by-numbers heroic drama. Obviously, we want the diver to be rescued, to survive, to thrive. There’s no point in watching a film like this if these things don’t happen. But the film is fairly shallow, and fairly one-dimensional. And just like so many of its ilk [I’m lookin at you, Deepwater Horizon], there is no discussion of why one might need an underwater pipeline in the first place. I mean, are we pumping fresh water to the mainland? How about chocolate? Are we pumping chocolate to the mainland from offshore? No? Goods? Services? Vibes? No, no, no. We are pumping oil, of course. And why haven’t we made oil obsolete? We certainly have that ability to make oil obsolete. We even have an entire Middle East worth of motivation to do so. And yet, we have no political will to do so because even confronted by global warming, we are an asshole culture. Last Breath was a decent, if simple, film, and one in which we need to ask ourselves, “Why was this necessary?”
♪This is my last breath
Here comes death at sea
Yes, it’s my last breath til brain death takes hold
Oh, I need you,
To zap me, to wrap me
Untrap me
To winch me, to pinch me
Cuz when I’m dead
I’m oh so dead
So last breath, oh, hi death
Last breath
Last breath
Tonight?♫
Rated PG-13, 93 Minutes
Director: Alex Parkinson
Writer: Mitchell LaFortune, Alex Parkinson, David Brooks
Genre: Jobs you don’t want … and why you don’t want them
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Deep Sea Divers
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Aquaphobes
♪ Parody Inspired by “Last Dance”
