‘Last Breath’ Review: Real-Life Deep Sea Survival Tale’s Devotion To Facts Waters Down The Drama

deadline.com:

Perhaps it makes sense that Alex Parkinson’s feature debut would simply be a flip of the dimensions of his usual fare. The documentarian has long made a career out of the kind of nature documentary that is more about the people said nature affects than the nature itself.

As in his 2024 Living With Leopards, Parkinson employs a curious conglomerate of archival and surveillance footage, first-hand accounts, interviews and, most pertinently, re-enactments, in apparent attempt to dramatize how the natural world can inspire community, chosen family and unusually strong bonds.

So went his 2019 documentary Last Breath, co-directed with Richard Da Costa, which chronicled the strange survival story of Chris Lemons, a saturation diver who somehow lived through nearly 40 minutes of oxygen deprivation in the North Sea, off the coast of Aberdeenshire in Scotland.

The 2025 Last Breath is its Hollywood mirror: a slightly fictionalized account of the same incident made with a documentary feel.