Last Breath

On a recent trip to Toronto to hang out with some fellow film nerds (a hangout we have self titled, Film Camp), our schedule got slightly derailed by a sell-out showing of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." Because Film Camp never rests, we substituted "Last Breath" in its place. A lark. I went in (I think we all went in) with low expectations - a procedural rescue film. How many of these have we seen - "Apollo 13," "The Impossible," "Thirteen Lives,"/"The Rescue," and then how many underwater adventures have we seen (albeit science-fiction or sci-fi-horror films) "The Abyss," "Deep Star Six," "Leviathan," etc. So an underwater procedural film staring Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu, and Finn Cole (from TV's "Animal Kingdom") seemed like just the correct piece of junk food we were looking for - we could makes jokes about it all weekend. No, no, no. I was gripped from the outset. As these three gentlemen entered their live-in tank chamber for what was to be a month spent at a super high compression to allow them to work underwater at a depth of 1000 feet repairing equipment in the North Sea, my claustrophobia flared up something fierce. It takes three or four days to decompress before you can get out of these metal sarcophaguses - if anything goes wrong, there is really nothing to be done; you would be crushed or exploded into jelly depending on where the accident occurred. This is a based on a true story of when a routine mission turned into a rescue. It was like I suddenly found myself treading water with a shark - I couldn't take my eyes off of it. Great fun. Great movie. Don't forget to breathe. Catch this harrowing film in theatres now.