The Last Breath
Directed by Joachim Hedén
Written by Nick Saltrese
Starring Julian Sands, Jack Parr, Alexander Arnold, and Kim Spearman
Run time 1 hour and 36 minutes
Rated R for language and bloody/grisly images
In theaters and on demand July 26

by Susan Keiser, Staff Writer

“The storm that uncovered the wreck must’ve affected the sharks as well.”

The Last Breath is mindless entertainment, the type of throwaway programmer that populated the seas and drive-ins of mid-20th century American cinema. Levi (Julian Sands, Warlock) has spent four decades in his search for the USS Charlotte, a battleship that sank off the Caribbean coast in World War II, but is stuck on the sidelines after a shark attack condemns him to a lifetime of knitting to strengthen his limbs. Having spent his last dime on his lifelong dream as the ship finally emerges from the sandy deep, Levi reluctantly allows his partner Noah (Jack Parr) to take his old college buddies out to the wreckage. Remarkably enough, the Charlotte is in near perfect condition after eighty years, well, except for the sharks.

There have been absolutely no reports whatsoever of sharks near where the ship is found. We know better, though,from the opening scene where two American sailors with distinctly non-American accents survive a U-boat attack but are quickly dispatched by those predators of the sea, poorly CGI’d tiger sharks.

The characters tow the fine line between cardboard cutouts and fleshed out individuals. There’s Noah, the young diver (Parr) who discovers the ship, and Sam, the ex-girlfriend (Kim Spearman) he’s destined to get back together with – if they survive. Their old chums include Bret, Sam’s rich dickhead of a brother (Alexander Arnold, from TV’s “Skins”) who lost his way after getting rich in “business”, and winds up funding the misadventure. We also got the goofy friend, Logan (Arlo Carter), who almost cannonballs himself into a watery grave at the very beginning of the expedition, and Riley (Erin Mullen), whose sole purpose is to literally take up oxygen and ponder the fate of a sailor who wrote his name on the ship’s walls. We know exactly which characters are going to die, if not how, beyond “being eaten by a goddamn shark.” That said, there is some creativity and especially some humor in the kills and near-misses.

In terms of underwater action, director Joachim Hedén knows what he’s doing, having written and directed the 2020 Swedish survival film Breaking Surface, and co-written its 2023 English-language remake, The Dive. But it is Nick Saltrese’s script (from a story by Andrew Prendergast) that both makes and breaks the film. The Last Breath’s screenplay leaves the viewer gasping for air, but the pockets of bonkers moments played absolutely straight, transform the movie from throwaway B-movie to enjoyable kitsch.

The Last Breath warrants a lot of suspension of disbelief, especially for a film featuring an ill-advised attempt at underwater surgery. Filmed in Belgium and off the coast of Malta in late 2022, The Last Breath doesn’t try too hard to convince you that any of this is authentic, especially when the poorly CGI’d New York City-ish skyline greets the survivors at the very end. It is hard to spoil this movie, because what are a bunch of hot young divers in their late twenties going to do in a film like this but be eaten alive one by one in a shark-infested shipwreck?

Julian Sands is great in what would be his final role before his death in a mountaineering accident in January 2023, and The Last Breath is deservedly dedicated in his honor. Even if you didn’t know Sands from A Room with a View or Boxing Helena, it is evident in his performance that his passing was a great loss to all who knew him. The mostly British cast does what they can as stereotypical Americans and college buddies who eventually become chum, though their accents come and go throughout the film.

Ultimately, The Last Breath is a cheap European survival film made in earnest for the American streaming market, that eventually achieves a level of entertainment and camp that films from the past decade such as Sharknado and Piranha 3-DD could not achieve intentionally. It is not a movie so much as it is a license plate, stamped out and produced en masse, with a few changes in detail here and there from the creators’ other work, but The Last Breath can easily be consumed without any lingering effects, especially if, like a shark, you don’t look backwards.