A gripping deep-sea rescue mission in ‘Last Breath’ with Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu

From left: Finn Cole, Woody Harrelson and Simu Liu in a scene from “Last Breath” (Focus Features)

A routine deep-sea diving mission in the North Sea goes terribly wrong when a young diver is stranded some 300 feet below the surface in the new film “Last Breath.” His umbilical cable has severed. The support vessel above is aimlessly drifting away from the site through violent, stormy waters. And the diver has only ten minutes of oxygen in his backup tank.

As if that wasn’t enough, it’s also a true story.

If merely reading this is giving you heart palpitations already, you can only imagine the white-knuckle experience of watching this all play out on the big screen. It’s 40ish minutes of pure suspense and anxiety as the story shuffles between the man at the bottom of the ocean, Chris Lemons (Finn Cole), his fellow saturation divers (Woody Harrelson as Duncan and Simu Liu as Dave) in the diving bell below the waters who are unable to help and the crew in the support vessel above (including Cliff Curtis and Mark Bonnar) scrambling to get their systems back online and operational as the clock rapidly runs out. Ten minutes has never felt so short — and then it just gets worse as the clock starts counting axoxygen.

At one point, Liu’s character Dave, a no-nonsense, all-business diver says matter-of-factly at that it’s a body recovery, not a rescue. Deep-sea saturation diving is a dangerous business, described at the start of the film as the most dangerous job on earth. Chris tells his fiancé, in a short introduction, that it’s no more dangerous than going to space. She replies that it’s funny that he thinks that is comforting.

The real incident a in September 2012 — Dave, Duncan and Chris were just one team of divers sent to the ocean floor off the coast of Aberdeen, Scotland, to repair oil pipeline.

The seas were particularly rough that day, with winds up to 35 knots, common for the North Sea but also not what one might call safe. Chris and Dave were in the middle of their work when they heard the urgent calls to abort: The dynamic positioning system in the support vessel above had failed and they were in drift.

If this sounds at all familiar, it may be because it was made into a documentary, also called “Last Breath” and released in 2019. While it was well-received, some true stories are just too gripping to exist solely in that form. It’s not exactly a surprise that a narrative film was made as well. There’s a good track record of recent complimentary adaptations — think Ron Howard’s “13 Lives” and “The Rescue” about the Thai boys soccer team stuck in the cave.

The only real problem, if one can even call it that, is that it’s so short. The film doesn’t take liberties with stretching out the timeline much at all and after 93 minutes, the whole thing is over. It feels strange to want a movie to be longer, but in the case of “Last Breath” I was both desperate for it to end, for anxiety reasons, and also wanting more. LINDSEY BAHR, MDT/AP Film Writer

“Last Breath,” a Focus Features release in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 Motion Picture Association for “brief strong language.” Running time: 93 minutes.