LAST BREATH

*CUT TO THE CHASE*

NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Jeremy

The film opens with text about how there are 20,000 miles of pipeline beneath all the oceans in the world. They are maintained by saturation divers who work in depths up to 1000 feet below the surface. It is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. We then see footage of an unconscious man at the bottom of a work station.

In Aberdeenshire, Scotland, Chris Lemons (Finn Cole) is with his fiancee Morag (Bobby Rainsbury) as he prepares to go on a rotation for a diving job in the North Sea. Morag knows the risks of the job and worries for Chris, but he says the job is “pretty cool”.

Chris travels to the harbor to meet with his team. He is in rotation with longtime friend Duncan Allcock (Woody Harrelson) and experienced diver Dave Yuasa (Simu Liu), who is a bit prickly with Chris upon meeting. While the three of them are together in a diving bell, Duncan tells Chris and Dave that the company has decided to force him to retire after 20 years, so this will be his last rotation.

The crew sails their ship in the middle of a storm. Chris and Dave exit the bell to go work underwater while Duncan stays inside to keep an eye on their work and to manage the cords that distribute oxygen, communication, and power. As the storm intensifies, the Dynamic Position System malfunctions, and the ship starts to turn. Chris and Dave start trying to head up back to the bell as quickly as possible. Dave makes it over the manifold, but he realizes Chris is about to have his cord snapped. He tells Chris to switch to his bailout air supply, which will give him ten minutes of oxygen, and to make it to the top of the manifold so Dave can find him. The cord does snap, and Chris is separated from Dave.

With the ship still out of power, Captain Andre Jenson (Cliff Curtis) tries to figure out what to do, in regards to saving Chris and making sure the ship’s anchor doesn’t rupture a pipeline and create an environmental disaster, despite them continuing to drift in the storm, potentially far from Chris. Jenson has the crew control the ship manually to stop them from drifting too far, while another crew member tries to bypass the DPS reboot.

Chris struggles to climb the manifold with limited visibility and his quickly depleting oxygen. He thinks about Morag, who kept sending him video messages to keep him going. His oxygen soon runs out, and Chris begins to lose consciousness.

A crew member spots Chris using an ROV, seeing that he is alive but obviously suffering from oxygen deprivation. They try to save him using the ROV, but Chris had tied himself down to the manifold to avoid being swept away by the tide. Meanwhile, Duncan tells Dave about a job he was on where he had to help recover bodies from a sunken ship, and how one of the victim’s wives was given a box with a few belongings to honor him, and how he does not want this same fate to befall Chris.

The DPS reboots, giving the ship power and allowing Dave to exit the bell again to get Chris. He manages to recover Chris, but he has now been without oxygen for nearly a half-hour. Duncan tries to revive Chris but fears that he is gone until Chris speaks. Duncan alerts the crew that Chris is alive and speaking, and everyone cheers.

Chris is put in a saturation chamber to decompress for three days as the rotation is called off. Duncan and Dave stay by his side as he recovers. On the third day, Chris parts ways with them, and Duncan tells the crew he is not ready to retire.

Chris reunites with Morag. He tells her about the incident without saying that it happened to him, but she quickly figures it out. While she is understandably distressed, Chris tells her that it was his determination in getting back to her that kept him alive.

The ending text states that Chris was without oxygen for 29 minutes but suffered no lasting physical or mental damage, and experts still cannot explain his survival. Three weeks later, he rejoined Duncan and Dave back on the rotation. Clips are shown of the real Chris Lemons at his wedding, with Duncan Allcock in attendance. One final clip is Chris getting back to work, with one crew member telling him, “Don’t fuck it up this time.”

The film is based on the true story of Chris Lemons, a saturation diver whose umbilical was severed during a storm. He was cut off from oxygen for 29 minutes before he was recovered by his crew mate Dave Yuasa. Chris was revived and suffered no lasting physical or mental damage from the experience.