A true story of survival

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, February 28th.

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Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a true life drama that might leave you gasping for air.

In 2012, saturation diver Chris Lemons became stranded on the ocean floor. He found himself more than 300 feet below the surface of the North Sea. The umbilical cable that tethered him to his ship snapped accidentally.

EICHER: The diver was without oxygen for half an hour before his crew was able to rescue him.

Here’s WORLD arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino on the new film hitting theaters this week that dramatizes this harrowing ordeal.

COLLIN GARBARINO: If you’re a fan of disaster movies, or if you like true stories of heroism, then there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy Last Breath.

DUNCAN: Dive control, diver two is on bailout.

CAPTAIN: How much gas does he have left?

DIVER SUPERVISOR: Ten minutes.

This is a taut 93-minute film about a courageous rescue mission and it’ll give you a new appreciation for a job you’ve probably never heard of. But it also might leave you feeling a little claustrophobic.

Finn Cole plays newly engaged Chris, a saturation diver who’s just signed on with a crew tasked with repairing vital oil pipelines crisscrossing the North Sea. He’s the relative newbie who’s assigned to work with veterans Duncan and Dave, played by Woody Harrelson and Simu Liu respectively. But what starts out as routine maintenance turns harrowing when the ship’s computer-guided positioning system goes offline.

DPO: I’m losing everything here.

CAPTAIN: Where’s our power?

FIRST OFFICER: Cap, we’re drifting out of control.

As the ship drifts away, Chris and Dave get dragged along by their umbilical cables which provide their oxygen, heat, and communication with the ship.

DAVE: Chris, you’ve got to really move.

CHRIS: I’m coming. I’m coming.

Dave manages to get clear, but when Chris’ cable snaps, he finds himself stranded on the ocean floor with only ten minutes of oxygen left in his backup tank.

DAVE: Now take slow, deep breaths, otherwise you’ll burn through your backup gas. Understand?

As the ship drifts further and further away from Chris, the entire crew race against time to save their lost comrade.

Last Breath is a tense movie that might leave you a little breathless, but it’s not too scary. It adapts the 2019 documentary of the same name, both of which were directed by Alex Parkinson. And he stays fairly true to the actual events in this dramatization, only adding a couple of complications to heighten the suspense. Parkinson brings a documentarian’s sensibility to the story, and even uses some of the archival footage in this film. It’s rated PG-13 for brief strong language, the worst of which comes from some of the documentary footage.

DUNCAN: Dive control, there’s no umbilical left in the bell. That’s everything I’ve got.

Compared to the big studios’ blockbuster tent poles, the stakes in Last Breath might seem pretty low. The heroes aren’t attempting to save the entire world from utter destruction. They’re frantically working to save just one life—the life of one of their own. But it’s a true story about a real person, who inexplicably survived an ordeal that should have killed him. As strange as it might seem to say it, this movie about running out of oxygen feels like a breath of fresh air.

And it’s something of a throwback—old school filmmaking that tells a remarkable story by reminding us of the nobility and fragility of our human condition.

I think stories like these resonate with us, not because we identify with the inspiring rescuers, but because we ourselves long for rescue. It’s this same awareness that caused David to sing about God drawing him out of deep waters.

DAVE: I can’t rescue you, if I can’t find you. Understand?

But Last Breath has another value in addition to its ability to tell a gripping story about rescue and the human condition. It also nimbly introduces viewers to the dangerous job of saturation diving.

There aren’t many of these divers around the world, but they’re vital for keeping our global economy running because they construct and maintain the world’s oceanic energy and communication conduits. Saturation divers live in pressurized capsules for weeks at a time, letting their bodies grow accustomed to deep water pressure. This allows them to work at depths up to 1,000 feet. In the course of telling its story, The Last Breath becomes something of an advertisement for the hidden “dirty jobs” that make our modern lives possible. It’s a fascinating glimpse into a world that most of us don’t even know exists.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

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