Last Breath's story is too short for a feature film
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Last Breath directed by Alex Parkinson is based on a real event when a diver named Chris Lemons got stranded on a bottom of the sea for a long time without oxygen. And the movie is about the tense rescue operation that was done to try to save him.
The movie works in that middle part where the main action is happening. It is tense and well shot. But there is a lot of padding on both sides of the film. There is way too much stuff leading up to the mission. And way to much happening after the mission.
I believe it is due to the actual event being rather short. The story happened in the real life in about 40 or so minutes. To have it run for a feature film length of one and a half hours the authors had to put stuff around the story. Which made it feel pretty much like padding.
I think maybe there was a possibility to tell the story from multiple perspectives, which could in theory solve the run time issue without the padding. But the film already has a lot of perspectives, just they are inter-cut in real time. Maybe the story in question just didn't land itself well to being made a feature length movie about.
The film looks very good. It's shot very well, but Parkinson doesn't do anything specifically brilliant when it comes to directing. It seems like he is simply focusing on making a descent movie and not on being creative. Which is fine. The middle part has enough interest on its own for this surface level basic film-making. But I would love to see a story like that in a style of Spielberg or somebody who is a bit more interested with what the camera does and how it moves.
I wouldn't say Parkinson completely ignored directing though. It doesn't feel like an edit of footage. It feels like a movie. There are closeup shots, some dutch angles, very good aerial stuff. It's just there is not a lot of flow or kineticism in the directing itself.
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