🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
Some stories seem too impossible to be true, and Last Breath is one of them.
The film, based on real events, follows commercial diver Chris Lemons, who was stranded deep underwater with no oxygen, no light and no way to escape. What should have been a routine job turned into a race against time, technology and human endurance.
With Finn Cole, Simu Liu and Woody Harrelson leading the cast, Last Breath delivers a high-stakes, pulse-pounding thriller that takes audiences into the dangerous, isolated world of deep-sea saturation diving.
Director Alex Parkinson, who also helmed the 2019 documentary of the same name, returns to bring this gripping true story to the big screen—with an intense, cinematic reimagining that places viewers inside the dive helmets of those who lived it.
For the actors, stepping into this world wasn't just about learning the mechanics of diving—it was about honoring the real men behind the story and confronting their own fears in the process.
Harrelson, who plays Duncan Allcock, the diving supervisor who refused to give up on Lemons, knew the stakes were high. "I think it adds a lot because you really don't want to disappoint those guys," Harrelson said. "You want them to believe that, 'Oh, you did a good job with your role.'"
The men behind the story have already seen Last Breath and, thankfully, their reviews were positive—even from the famously stoic Dave Yuasa (Liu). "We were just reading the reactions of the different characters," Harrelson said. "Luckily, it was a favorable review. Dave didn't say a lot, though. Just, 'Liked it.'"
"That was it," Liu laughed.
Even so, it was surreal for the actors to take on a story where every moment they portrayed had life-or-death consequences in reality. Both Cole and Liu had prior scuba diving experience, but nothing could have fully prepared them for the intense underwater training required for Last Breath.
"We did a lot of training but, of course, there were some sticky situations," Cole said. "There always are. But we're a couple of tough actors—we got through it."
To accurately depict the challenges of saturation diving, the cast worked with Dive Med in Malta, receiving world-class training to simulate the experience of professional divers, from basic scuba safety to the complexities of operating heavy, restrictive commercial divers' helmets.
"They trained us as if we'd never been in the sea before, up to the level of saturation divers," Cole said. "And the whole time, we were just cared for and looked after. That's a massive part of feeling good in the water. So when stuff did go wrong, we were prepared for it."
One such moment was when Liu had a sudden equipment failure while submerged during filming.
"We were in the set of the bell," Liu said, referring to the pressurized diving capsule used to transport divers deep underwater. "It was just a scene where the divers are popping down and we had our bell in a very shallow pool."
"I submerged, but my oxygen tank got caught on something," Liu said. "They yelled cut and I couldn't get back up." Even just talking about it made Liu "feel some type of way."
Thankfully, the rigorous safety training kicked in and Liu freed himself quickly, but it made the high-stakes production feel even more real. Harrelson, who had been watching from nearby, said that it was a wake-up call for the entire cast. "When that happened, I was scared as s***," he said.
While Last Breath is a story about one man's survival, it's also about the teamwork and perseverance of the divers who refused to give up on him. That sense of brotherhood and trust extended to the bond between Cole and Liu.
"The nice thing about doing this with someone like Simu is that we just get on with it," Cole said. "And we both had each other's backs."
"It was never like, 'Oh, Simu's doing it, so I've got to do it,'" he said. "We just figured things out together. We both had the same experience and we both helped each other out.... we just walked through it together. And I think that, like, that was the essence of the story and that was on and off set."
"We were playing a lot of Padel at the same time and mixing up the teams there," Cole added. "That helped with some of the chemistry."
Liu said that his confidence in the water came partly from having Cole by his side. "If there was even a slight bit of hesitation on Finn's part, I would have sensed it and it would have made it so much worse in my head," he said. "But because we were both just like, 'OK, let's do this,' it made all the difference."
One of the film's most powerful moments comes when Allcock shuts down any notion that Lemons is already dead. "The situation that happened was nearly miraculous," Harrelson said.
"Duncan, I found him a fascinating, really upbeat, positive guy. But he got emotional when he was talking about it. Duncan was like, 'We're not giving up on this guy. We're just not giving up.' That kind of crazy resolve, in light of the fact that it was just going to be a corpse retrieval at this point, was admirable."
"These guys really became heroes when the time came," he added.
