Adrenaline Rush
It's built around Leonardo da Vinci's 1485 sketch of a pyramid-shaped parachute — and renowned sky diver Adrian Nicholas' decision to test it for the first time ever more than 500 years later.
The narration, which occasionally leans toward the overly dramatic, calls the proposed test "a journey across time and space."
For most of the 40 minutes, there are spectacular aerial shots of divers — some jumping out of airplanes and others participating in "base jumping" directly off rather frightening-looking cliffs high above Norway's pristine fiords.
Spliced into the Imax-size scenery are shots of elementary school students taking their own risks — the fear of the first day at a new school and a youngster's impressive show-and-tell project (a pretty big iguana).
And there are some colorful, computer graphics designed to explain how adrenaline affects the human body and the brain.
Nicholas is certainly an expert on sky-diving. Over his career, he's averaged seven jumps per day.
For the finale, Nicholas and Olliekainen — after several parachute manufacturers deride the planned experiment as pure folly — work with designers and scientists at England's Salford University to replicate the parachute that da Vinci had sketched.
Will it work? Will it be a disaster? Even big-screen documentaries have to have some suspense.
E-MAIL: ivan@desnews.com