Is Last Breath movie based on a true story? Explained
Last Breath, a survival thriller led by Woody Harrelson, began playing in cinemas on February 28, 2025, after opening in theaters in Greece a day prior. The film is directed by Alex Parkinson who wrote the screenplay alongside Mitchell LaFortune and David Brooks.
Last Breath, at its core, is about sea divers doing their highly risky jobs under extreme pressure. The film is notably a dramatization of the real-life sea diving incident that happened just off the coast of Scotland in September 2012.
This is yet another entry into the nonfiction survival thriller genre of movies. It is a mostly faithful retelling of the incident that happened 300 feet below the surface of the sea. In 2019, a feature documentary about the same incident had been made with Parkinson at the helm alongside Richard da Costa.
What was the incident that inspired Last Breath?
Sea diving or deep sea accidents are not unheard of and some of those have also been documented through documentaries and narrative features. For instance, 2021's The Rescue, follows the Than Luang cave rescue in which British divers saved a Thai soccer team from a flooded cave.
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According to a story The Washington Post published on February 27, 2025, Last Breath follows one such incident that happened in September 2012 when the diving support ship Bibby Topaz was working to repair an oil pipeline off the coast of Scotland.
Suddenly, the ship experienced a malfunction in its automated thruster system, causing it to lose position above the repair crew. The divers were 300 feet below when the ship began to drift away. Chris Lemons, a Scottish deep sea diver, found his lifeline to the vessel (known as the umbilical) stuck under a piece of equipment.
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The lifeline ultimately broke, leaving Lemons with only a few minutes of oxygen left. His fellow divers, Dave Yuasa and Duncan Allcock were still tethered to the vessel. This led to the crew launching a rescue mission to bring Lemons back to safety.
Who appears in Last Breath?
Woody Harrelson appears in the role of the experienced sea diver Duncan Allcock, who supervised the repair from a submersible known as the bell. Harrelson is a versatile actor who has appeared in films and TV series of various genres. Some of his most notable projects are The People vs. Larry Flynt, True Detective, and The Messenger.
Finn Cole, widely known for his role as Michael Gray in Peaky Blinders, appears in the movie as the young sea diver Chris Lemons. Cole has also appeared in the crime drama series, Animal Kingdom and the 2021 Fast & Furious installment F9.
Simu Liu plays the role of the sea diver Dave Yuasa. Liu is best known for his role as the superhero Shang-Chi in MCU's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
The cast also includes Cliff Curtis (Meg 2: The Trench), Mark Bonnar (Assasin's Creed IV: Black Flag), MyAnna Buring (The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 and Part 2), and Josef Atlin (Game of Thrones).
