Woody Harrelson in a real submarine thriller

There is a certain kind of real lifelong logistics rescue drama-ron Howard’s “Apollo 13” is the grandfather of Hen-Waard you realize how reassed with theatrical devices that are the most films real. ‘Last“Is a submarine tension thriller based on a saturation dive accident that took place in 2012 off the coast of Scotland. It is a film about life and death, heroic actions and the fear of being trapped in the icy black water 300 feet below the surface of the ocean.

But as I looked at it, I kept thinking that if it was a made-up piece of Hollywood product, it would need a villain-a saboteur, perhaps, or perhaps a captain of a ship gains that appreciated business gains above human life. “Last breath” does not have that. The film is only 93 minutes long and it is a compact story that never strays from its central situation. That is what is effective about it (and also a bit limited in a certain sense). The film Hypes never shows you, always sticking to the reality of the hair trigger that matters.

It is based on a British documentary from 2019 also called ‘Last Breath’, and co-listed by Alex Parkinson, a British non-fiction filmmaker who makes his large screen debut here. He does a good job and lets you feel his documentary roots in a way that defines the nut and bolts of the film, holding tension on the facts. The early minutes immerse us in the Robo-industrial details of what it is to be a professional saturation diver-which means that for a long period you dive that your body tissue is balanced with the pressure of respiratory gas, a delicate symbiosis that requires a long period of decompression (days or even weeks). If all that sounds complicated (it is), you could say it like the film in a opening title: saturation diving is one of the most dangerous professions on earth.

“Last Breath” concentrates on three divers who are part of a team that is assigned to replace part of the pipeline that defies gas under the bottom of the North Sea. The sets of the film don’t look like sets. We feel that we see real machines, real wide-angle video monitors and a real diving bell that will take them, that looks like a bean-shaped submarine made from Jiffy Pop Tinfoil. Inside there are various compartments that house teams from divers.

In the opening scene of the film we meet Chris Lemons (Finn Cole), a Scottish Bloke with curly hair, saying goodbye to Hanna (Myanna Buring), his fiancé, who is clearly worried about what Chris does for a living. (The film never suggests that something misplaced about that feeling.) Arrived in the base camp, Chris reverses with Duncan Allcock, an experienced diver with whom he has had different missions. The moment we see Woody HarrelsonWith his wildcat grin and holy educationalability, we sink in the feeling that this isDespite all his truth, a lush dramatic re-enactment. But the characterisations remain minimal, limited to what we can see.

Duncan Ribbs himself as the old man of the group – but what he means is that he is postponed by the company for which he works. This, he reveals, will be his last dive. Chris is entirely focused on Hanna at home, and that is his determining feature. And then there is David Yuasa, played by Simu Liu, star of the Marvel hit “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the ten Rings.” He is the man of few words, depicted as unpleasant Brusk, except that Liu is so charismatic that he shows us by his presence that David, who has two young daughters, is not a bad guy. He just doesn’t like to circle with Cornball Bro Binding.

While Duncan stays in the bell, Chris and David slide into their diving equipment and pointed metal helmets the hole in the floor and down to the bottom of the sea, where there is a boxy grid that they can hold, the distribution piece. The task they do is supposedly routine, but there is one unusual element: at the top the massive support ship to which the diving bell is tied up is trapped in a furious, golf-desired sea storm. (Duncan is such a veteran that he can see how high the waves are just to observe the water in the clock pod.)

The divers are towed away from the area where they were at work, and Chris’s multicolored “umbilical cord” rope nods. That rope is really a lifeline – it sends the Heliox to breathe the divers. Chris has only stored breathing gas in his backup bus for 10 minutes, and that is when he floats in the aqueous darkness.

From that moment on, the entire accident lasted 40 minutes, which takes place in real time. Chris returns to the distribution piece, but his gas is finished. He is now there, in his helmet, without oxygen. The film checks time (five minutes without oxygen; now 15 minutes …), while the action shifts to the clamating above. To find Chris, the entire damaged system of the mother ship must be closed and restarted (which an officer does in one of those tension scenes with many threads). The captain (Cliff Curtis) must at some point decide whether it is worth risking an ecological disaster to use tongs to save one man (his answer: no).

I will not reveal what happens, although it is not a spoiler to say that a story like this does not tend to get the treatment with a large screen if it has a tragic end. There is a scene in which we are very afraid that things have not become good, and the moment that shifts is so casual that the audience lifts in a most unusual way. “Last Breath” delivers every incident with so much specificity that it is like a cinematic piece of journalism. Yet it leaves you with a small tingling of the creepy.