Warning! This article contains spoilers for Last Breath.
On the surface, Last Breath is a survival thriller. Once it reaches the ocean floor, the Alex Parkinson-directed picture is a story about the power of love.
Last Breath tells the true tale of three saturation divers, Chris (Finn Cole), Dave (Simu Liu), and Duncan (Woody Harrelson), as they venture to the bottom of the North Sea to make routine pipe repairs. When inclement weather severs contact between the divers and their base ship, Chris is left stranded, his oxygen rapidly running out, putting his life and promise to come home to his fiancée Morag (Bobby Rainsbury) at risk.
ScreenRant spoke with Cole, Liu, and Harrelson to discuss how love helped Chris persevere through his life-threatening situation, what it feels like to make these survival thrillers, and where they drew the line between mirroring their real-life counterparts and putting their own fictional spin on their characters.
Love Helps Finn Cole’s Chris Survive Last Breath
“It Can Fuel You…”
There is no scientific explanation for Chris’s survival in Last Breath. The diver spent 40 minutes without oxygen at the bottom of the ocean floor and was able to not only live, but live without a deteriorated quality of life. As Finn Cole told ScreenRant‘s Liam Crowley, it all came down to the “power of love.”
“It’s a really good opportunity and a really good story to reflect on one’s own relationships and connections with other people and how important they are and how important they are to what we do,” Cole said. “That’s what I took away from it, is what we all learn from each other as characters. They all teach [each other]. I think that from what Chris was able to teach Dave in the power of love and how you can bring that to work, those things can cross over and they can fuel you.”
That love in Chris’s heart was pulled directly from the man himself, as Cole praised the real-life Chris Lemons for always putting “everyone else in front before him.” Woody Harrelson, who plays Duncan Allcock, elected to take some creative liberties with his role.
“I figured I’d want be believable. If I tried to do his accent, I don’t think I could have pulled it off,” Harrelson noted about Duncan’s real-life Scottish accent. “Very tough accent. I really was more concerned with embodying his vibe. He’s very positive guy, which I am too, and he loves people, He’s kind of the glue between these characters who at first didn’t seem to get along great. And so yeah, I thought he was a fascinating, interesting, fun-loving guy.”
Simu Liu Draws Parallels Between Last Breath & Arthur The King
“Whenever You’re Faced With A Challenge, That Really Excites Me…”
Venturing to the ocean floor specifically was new territory for Liu, but survival thrillers come with experience. Liu previously put his athleticism to the test in 2024’s Arthur The King.
“I loved making Arthur the King and I loved making Last Breath for very similar reasons. These are movies that I don’t think there’s a lot of places to cheat,” Liu said about having to legitimately go through both films’ physicality. “What drew me to it was a very similar thing. There was no way that we were going to fake being underwater. It was apparent to us very early on that we were going to have to learn how to dive and dive really well. Whenever you’re faced with a challenge, that’s the stuff that really excites me.”
Last Breath is now in theaters.
Source: ScreenRant Plus
Last Breath
8/10
- Release Date
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February 27, 2025
- Runtime
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93 minutes
- Director
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Alex Parkinson
- Writers
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Alex Parkinson, David Brooks, Mitchell LaFortune
- Producers
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Jared Underwood, Alastair Burlingham, Danny Mandel, Jeremy Plager, Anna Mohr-Pietsch, Gary Raskin, Stewart Le Marechal, Richard Da Costa, Andrew C. Robinson, Jonny Persey, David Brooks, Al Morrow, Dan Clifton, Hal Sadoff, Paul Brooks, Norman Golightly
Cast
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Woody Harrelson
Duncan Allcock
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