March 7, 2024 – This fact-based movie about a dramatic undersea rescue is an amazing tale of bravery, ingenuity, skill and survival against the odds.

Alex Parkinson, who co-directed a 2019 documentary of the same name about this same incident, also directs this new drama. This movie gets into the nuts and bolts of deep sea diving and the bond among divers living and working together undersea in extreme conditions for extended periods.

Veteran actor Woody Harrelson (“Venom: Let There Be Carnage”) is the most recognizable star of this movie, but Cliff Curtis (“Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw” and “The Meg”) has also been in a lot of movies, and Simu Liu has been in a couple of high-profile movies, “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” and “Barbie.” Harrelson and Simu Liu play divers, while Curtis plays Andre Jenson, captain of the ship carrying the divers.

At the center of the story is diver Chris Lemons (played by Fin Cole). Chris is a relatively inexperienced diver. His mentor, Duncan Allock (Harrelson) has every confidence in him, but the taciturn diver Dave Yuasa (Simu Liu) is skeptical. Duncan, Chris and Dave comprise a three man diving bell team tasked with repairing an underwater pipeline 300 feet below the wild North Sea, over 100 miles off the coast of Scotland.

Working on an underwater pipeline at this depth is a lot like repairing the outside of a spaceship in outer space. In fact, this story reminds me of the space rescue in “Apollo 13” (1995). The environment, like space, is hostile to human life without the support of special equipment, including a breathing mixture of helium and oxygen and pressurized housings to acclimate the divers to the immense undersea pressures.

The divers are housed in special pressurized chambers with special gas mixtures which are required for them to gradually adapt over time to breathing oxygen-helium gas mixtures under deep water pressure. It takes weeks for their bodies to adapt to the tissue saturation of these gases at compression. After their month-long work tour is done, it takes another four days in the chambers to decompress before they can emerge into normal air.

This so-called “saturated diving” work is very dangerous, and this movie is about one of those dangers that is related to the extreme weather conditions of the North Sea. As Chris and Dave leave the diving bell an unknown peril awaits 300 feet above them. The ship above them is in a fierce storm, but it keeps the diving bell stationary because of a computerized control system called “dynamic positioning”.

Suddenly, the dynamic positioning system stops working and the ship begins to drift. As it drifts, it drags the diving bell, with Duncan inside, along with it. Duncan reels out all the cable slack he has, but it becomes stretched to the limit as the ship drifts. The cable carries the breathing mixture to the divers, as well as communication wires. Chris's cable gets tangled in the pipeline rigging, and it breaks, leaving him with only five minutes of gas left in his reserve tank.

Dave tells Chris he will come back for him before he is pulled away by his cable, attached to the diving bell and ship. Up above, Captain Andre Jenson and his crew have to figure out a way to get the drifting ship back under control and back to its station so that Chris can be rescued. This requires ingenuity, skill and tough decisions under pressure.

The movie gives a better, more detailed explanation of the action environment than I have in this review, and it is quite compelling and dramatic. This movie includes video from the actual incident, as well a scenes recreated for this film. I found the depiction of the compression and decompression equipment on the boat, as well as the ship's control systems compelling as well. It is a fascinating business.

This movie has a well-acted, compelling story to tell, with effective underwater scenes. It also serves as an introduction into the dangerous world of saturation diving — where divers make complex repairs hundreds of feet below the surface of the ocean. This movie rates a B.

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