All made for IMAX movies fall somewhere between a short film and a real movie, usually with runtimes around the 45 minute mark. With only 45 minutes to work with, an IMAX movie has limited time to engage the viewer and impress them with great visuals that make full use of the IMAX technology. No matter how big your screen is, you can’t really recreate the IMAX experience in your home theater, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be blown away by great visuals and nice cinematography. OCEAN MEN: EXTREME DIVE doesn’t really feel like an IMAX movie, but rather it feels like an unfocused documentary about a little known sport.
For those that aren’t aware, there’s a “sport” called freediving in which highly trained divers test the limits of the human body by diving deep in the ocean without oxygen and attempt to set records for longest time underwater and deepest dive. OCEAN MEN: EXTREME DIVE covers some of the more famous deep divers as they attempt to set some records. Freedivers Pipin Ferreras and Umberto Pelizzari are passionate about what they do and their love of the sport comes through clearly on screen. The idea is perfect for an IMAX movie; all they need to do is to follow some divers as they go in the ocean and capture the greatness of the ocean. Throw in some aerial shots and things like that and you’d have a great time catching this at your local IMAX theater.
Unfortunately, OCEAN MEN: EXTREME DIVE spent way too much time giving us a history lesson or filling the screen with archive, non-IMAX footage. When that happens, the image displays on the screen with a blue, ocean-like background, which of course is a complete waste of the IMAX screen. Ironically, the best IMAX footage we get are the aerial shots following the deep divers as they train for their dive. The footage of the planes flying over the bridge or the runner going through the mountains is great. The ocean shots on the other hand leave a lot to be desired. There’s just not enough underwater footage and although the scene with the diver and the dolphin is beautiful, it’s really just a flash in the pan. They really missed an opportunity to put a camera on a diver’s back as he free dives down in the ocean. That would have been incredible on an IMAX screen.
The made for IMAX films that have been releasing on Blu-ray are hit or miss and unfortunately, OCEAN MEN: EXTREME DIVE is a miss for me. It had moments that were nice to look at, but too much of the film is spent on giving us a history lesson. There are some great IMAX movies out there that you could use to show off your system, but this isn’t one of them.
Video: You couldn’t ask for a better video transfer, which makes the lack of impressive visuals even more disappointing.
Audio: The audio was fine.
Unfortunately, there are no special features on this release.
