The Last Breath (2024) Review: Julian Sands’ Final Film Role in a Sporadically Suspenseful Shark Thriller

The Last Breath marks the third shark movie I’ve ever seen this year after the tepid Something in the Water and the heavy-handed Under Paris. The movie also happens to be an unfortunate final feature for Julian Sands, who died in January after his hiking tragedy on Mount Baldy in California. He has appeared in many films, one of which includes the controversial 1993 thriller Boxing Helena.

In The Last Breath, the late Julian Sands didn’t appear in a lead role but rather a supporting turn as Levi, a boat captain who used to be a diver. He runs a tourist dive operation in the British Virgin Islands with the help of Noah (Jack Parr), his younger crewmate and recent college dropout.

Then one day, Noah’s friends including his ex-girlfriend and New York-based ER doctor Sam (Kim Spearman), Wall Street investment banker and influencer Brett (Alexander Arnold), Logan (Arlo Carter) and Riley (Erin Mullen) visit the island after they find out about a wreckage. That wreckage in question is the long-lost USS Charlotte after the German submarine torpedoed the warship back in 1944. They are looking forward to diving down to the wreck with Brett offering a high price to Levi and Noah to take them there by boat. Levi initially rejects Brett’s offer until Noah asks for a significant amount. Noah, who is an experienced diver, would lead the diving expedition to the bottom of the ocean where the wreckage is located. Levi, however, stays put on the boat due to his leg injury.

The first 30 minutes are predominantly spent on establishing each of these characters. But director Joachim Hedén, working from Andrew Prendergast and Nick Saltrese’s screenplay, could only muster a tedious drama with stilted dialogues and the young characters portraying standard-issue archetypes that we often see in such a movie. The checklist includes a level-headed ER doctor (Kim Spearman’s Sam), a no-nonsense leader of the diving group (Jack Parr’s Noah), a wealthy and arrogant influencer (Alexander Arnold’s Brett), an obligatory comic relief who likes to fool around (Arlo Carter’s Logan) and a meek female friend (Erin Mullen’s Riley). The acting is serviceable but none of them stands out. Not even Sands’ role as a grizzled boat captain, who is sadly sidelined for most of the movie’s duration.

I admit that sitting through the laborious 30-minute setup sure feels like a chore. Even when these young characters finally dive into the sea, the movie suffers from an erratic, stop-start momentum. It’s not like the movie is devoid of suspenseful moments — the scene where Sam has to work quickly under pressure to stop the bleeding on one of her injured friends while floating on the water comes to mind.

But these moments only come a few and far between and frankly, it’s frustrating because of the potential that Hedén could have pulled off here. I mean, the concept of young divers trapped in wreckage with a shark preying on them should have been a consistently tense and claustrophobic experience to take advantage of the movie’s what-could-have-been-lean 96-minute length.

I get that The Last Breath doesn’t have the luxury of a large production budget, which can be seen in its shoddy CGI, particularly the shark creature. But I wish Hedén could have done more with the power of suggestion through the ingenious use of camera placements, POV shots and such to counter the movie’s budget constraints. Eric Börjeson’s underwater cinematography is decent without looking overly murky that I don’t have to squint my eyes to see what’s going on within the wreckage.

The Last Breath does come alive towards the climactic third act with one of the characters, all alone, trying to outsmart not one but two sharks in the wreckage. But it isn’t enough to salvage this overall missed opportunity of a thrilling shark movie.