Last Breath (#656)


When I entered the theater yesterday, I had a flashback to the start of he Korean War when I was determined to enlist in some branch of the service. One of the options was Naval Intelligence and during my interview, I asked what I might be doing in Naval Intelligence. The answer was "you'll be spending a lot of time under water as a deep sea diver in a helmet."  I opted out of that choice. But the film I saw was all about divers in hard helmets, and I was glad I opted out. Based on or inspired by a true story, LAST BREATH told the story of a crew of deep sea divers tasked with repairing a pipeline on the ocean floor at depths of more than 300 feet. In this modern world, they had to accustom themselves to operating at such depths and had to spend considerable time (days?) in decompression chambers. The old-timer in the crew was played by Woody Harrelson doing his last assignment before retiring. One of the younger and less experienced guys gets trapped in equipment under water and all efforts were made to rescue him. It was suspenseful but not unbearably so, and the movie's story was told in a reasonable hour and 33 minutes. 77% of critics and 90% of audiences gave it s thumbs up. I need no more reminders of my near miss under water back in the 1950s.

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