Ben Foster looks and sounds a lot like Lance Armstrong in The Program, but director Stephen Frears fails to get under the skin of a drugs cheat stripped of his seven consecutive Tour de France titles.
Frears doesn't hang about when it comes to the doping scandal, cutting straight to Armstrong's confession on Oprah in January 2013 before tracking back to chronicle his habitual drug-taking, of which there was plenty. These early scenes create instant shock value before the film settles into a groove, following Armstrong's descent without ever going too deep. Lone Survivor's Foster plays the part, warts n'all, arguably veering too far towards the uglier side of Armstrong's character.
His arrogance is fuel to get him from the day-racing circuit in America to leading the pack in the gruelling European road races which Fears shoots in atypically dynamic style. Beneath that, there are hints of Armstrong's victim complex.
Frears doesn't hang about when it comes to the doping scandal, cutting straight to Armstrong's confession on Oprah in January 2013 before tracking back to chronicle his habitual drug-taking, of which there was plenty. These early scenes create instant shock value before the film settles into a groove, following Armstrong's descent without ever going too deep. Lone Survivor's Foster plays the part, warts n'all, arguably veering too far towards the uglier side of Armstrong's character.
His arrogance is fuel to get him from the day-racing circuit in America to leading the pack in the gruelling European road races which Fears shoots in atypically dynamic style. Beneath that, there are hints of Armstrong's victim complex.
- 10/16/2015
- Digital Spy
Lance Armstrong is proof that even the best liars eventually fold to the burden of ugly truths. Under the immense pressures of competitor accusations and threats of legal action against him, Armstrong finally cracked, and when he did, director Alex Gibney had just recently wrapped The Road Back. The film was intended to document the cycling legend’s return to the Tour de France, but when Armstrong decided to come clean about his long disputed use of performance enhancing drugs, Gibney was forced to put the film back into production, sitting down with his subject once again, shooting new interviews and revisiting the original ones with a new understanding of the icon’s extreme hubris and his unique political position as charitable cancer survivor turned cycling super star. What was once a triumphant comeback story of a man passed his prime trying to clear his name as continuous smear campaigns...
- 2/18/2014
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Director: Alex Gibney; Screenwriter Alex Gibney; Starring: Lance Armstrong, Reed Albergotti, Betsy Andreu, Michelle Ferrari; Running time: 124 mins; Certificate: 15
The issue of self-insertion is a tricky one for documentary filmmakers. It's tempting for any director to cast themselves as more than a narrator or a tour guide, but participate too much and you end up distracting from the story you're actually telling, as Michael Moore has demonstrated amply and often.
Alex Gibney, arguably the best non-fiction filmmaker working today, knows when to pull back and when to lean in - he was scarcely a presence at all in last year's compelling We Steal Secrets, but here his involvement is crucial, and his relationship with his subject ultimately more illuminating than any of the talking head segments that surround it.
Gibney was given unprecedented access to Lance Armstrong in 2008, for a documentary that originally took shape as a kind of comeback chronicle-cum-puff piece.
The issue of self-insertion is a tricky one for documentary filmmakers. It's tempting for any director to cast themselves as more than a narrator or a tour guide, but participate too much and you end up distracting from the story you're actually telling, as Michael Moore has demonstrated amply and often.
Alex Gibney, arguably the best non-fiction filmmaker working today, knows when to pull back and when to lean in - he was scarcely a presence at all in last year's compelling We Steal Secrets, but here his involvement is crucial, and his relationship with his subject ultimately more illuminating than any of the talking head segments that surround it.
Gibney was given unprecedented access to Lance Armstrong in 2008, for a documentary that originally took shape as a kind of comeback chronicle-cum-puff piece.
- 1/29/2014
- Digital Spy
Lance Armstrong’s story was one of the closest things we ever got to a real life superhero origin—a man overcoming a death sentence to rule one of the most grueling sporting events in human history. His iconic status was so large that acclaimed documentarian Alex Gibney was set to make a film that would cover his comeback to the Tour De France in 2009. Plans changed when Armstrong finally admitted to the long speculated rumors that he used sporting enhancement drugs during his championship run. Now a few years after that revelation Gibney is set to finish his documentary with a different spin; the film that was once designed to celebrate the return of a hero has transformed into a striking depiction of a tremendous fall from grace.
In many ways Gibney’s The Armstrong Lie is a therapeutic study of all the different facets to this story. To...
In many ways Gibney’s The Armstrong Lie is a therapeutic study of all the different facets to this story. To...
- 12/14/2013
- by Dan Clark
- Nerdly
Toronto -- Betsy Andreu -- who was maligned for years by Lance Armstrong after she and her husband suggested he was doping -- had a simple message for documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney at Sunday's premiere of The Armstrong Lie: "Thank you for not buying the bullshit." Andreu, who is married to cyclist and former Armstrong teammate Frankie Andreu, received a rousing applause when appearing on stage with Gibney and cyclist Jonathan Vaughters, who himself once admitted to doping before spearheading a movement to clean up the sport. Photos: The Scene at the Toronto Film Festival 2013 Frank Marshall and Matthew Tolmach produced The
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- 9/8/2013
- by Pamela McClintock
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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