But there are bum notes. Patrick Kirst’s music is very similar to Williams’s Jaws, just slower. Other maritime tropes keep intruding: fisherman’s jumpers on submarine captains on periscopes. A man paddling to a Winslet-sized piece of flotsam after his boat goes down. And, when nipped by an unseen shark, his gulps echo the skinny dipping hippie who was Jaws’ amuse bouche. Julian Sands even has on the same red knitted cap as Bill Murray’s team Zissou in The Life Aquatic. (although in a nice touch his hobby is knitting them to help his arthritis) The sharks grouped around a warship also seemed similar to Bruce and his friends in Finding Nemo? Some references, if not most of them, are undoubtedly tongue-in-cheek and there for fun, but the tropes can make things seem less imaginative than they actually are. One of the characters is like half of Scooby Doo’s cast poured into a blender.
Perhaps the biggest bum note is Levi’s insistence that vintage rum be drunk with Diet Coke and no ice. The Carribean runs on ice. Ice and rum. At least, it does when your character allegedly runs a tiny beach bar. It was like watching Yoda huff glue. Disgusting.
“…a handsome final performance from Julian Sands…”
The film looks like it was made by dive enthusiasts, but this is perhaps where it faces its biggest fight. The full-face dive masks used have microphones that allow for conversation underwater. But this removes a constraint that is otherwise a perfect catalyst for drama. The cast is very good and the characters are well-drawn, so the interpersonal drama works. But when they bicker underwater it begins to sound like a hiss from a leak in the film’s construction, because the underwater photography does not provide meaningful physical expression by the actors.
It feels like the writers might have benefited from another watch of James Cameron’s thrilling exercise in waterboarding, The Abyss, which used staccato walkie-talkies instead of Altman-style overlapping conversations. The overabundance of ADR chatter is an issue the drama and interest just can not escape, making things feel unreal when the plot and crew have done so much otherwise to make things genuine.
The English actor Jack Parr (from Eastenders) has terrific, brooding matinee idol looks and does decent perfectly. Alexander Arnold (another Brit, ex of Skins), as his scummy college buddy, is terrific too. And Kim Spearman convinces as a young doctor in her opening scene, despite the ludicrous casting of a southern Asian girl as a native of the Virgin Islands opposite her in a scene that was otherwise pretty condescending.
The Last Breath navigates its time at sea with real skill, and it provides us with a handsome final performance from Julian Sands, but sadly, the drama doesn’t quite float.
"…navigates its time at sea with real skill..."
