Sonic Break

Sonic Break
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Somebody would need to be crazy to become the first human to break the sound barrier in a freefall. That somebody was Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner, who had set the world records for highest parachute jump from a building and the lowest BASE jump ever when he leapt from the hand of the Christ The Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro.

But as this suspenseful documentary directed by Stevan Riley for ESPN Films’ 30 For 30 Shorts reveals, “Fearless Felix” actually had to regain his sanity to attempt the impossible: jump from a space capsule borne by a helium balloon to the frigid stratosphere 23 miles above the earth and travel at a speed of 690 mph before parachuting safely to earth.

While it was Baumgartner who asked the question, “What is it that I can do to live forever?”, the answer was really provided by a NASA-scale team of flight engineers, millions of dollars in funding and five years of planning. At one point, the difficult, conflicted Baumgartner walked away-only to be talked back to the project, and talked through the ordeal by sports psychologist Michael Gervais, aka “Psych Mike.”

In the moments before the fateful jump, October 14, 2012, safety controller Joe Kittenger told Baumgartner, “Good luck and God bless you.” All was going according to the plan until shortly after the sonic boom, when Felix went into a dreaded flat spin that turned him into something like a whirligig falling off a maple tree-at the speed of sound. He had only a few seconds to find the right body position, and the calm, to straighten out his descent.

That ability to unite mind and body is really what Sonic Break is all about. As Gervais says, “We need people like Felix to show us what’s possible, to remind us what it feels like to be alive.”

Director: Stevan Riley

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