Film Review: The Armstrong Lie (15) (U.S.A. 2013) (Director: Alex Gibney),  The Filmhouse Cinema Screen Three, Edinburgh, Sunday 02.02.2014, 18:10

This is a documentary about that naughty boy called Lance.

It was intended initially as a 'puff' piece, though then the scandal erupted while the film was being made, which caused the focus of the film to be entirely different. I was intrigued by this element and the fact that the director is the person who made the 2007 film, 'Taxi to the Dark Side' about the mistreatment of local peoples in the Middle-East by military forces from the United States of America. Lance's bullshit had been peddled in such a way that a director of a very astute documentary film was able to be fooled by him.

The film itself is not perfect though it is very interesting. I felt there was slightly too much footage of the 2009 Tour de France, Lances comeback from retirement. Though also to consider that that race can be considered as his folly, may be it needed to be as prominent as it was. It was his folly, as he did most of the stages in that race 'clean', and it was these stages that were so far behind what he had been doing in his winning years, and therefore showed in retrospect the victory years to be the product of cheating. This was the catalyst for all of the worms to come out of the can.

What the film I feel does best is show how Lance speaks. He talks in a similar way to someone who is a known criminal, in that he always where he can keeps the detail as vague as possible. He still tries to charm and gloss over elements in his commending charismatic way. He still tries to be as innocent as he can possibly be. There was a point where he states 'that no one knows the full story' (I may be paraphrasing). I found this funny, as the very simple response is 'no, you do'. He is the only person (the (past)victor), who had to be involved at least to a degree in all elements of what went on. I would also say that the footage of Lance speaking also shows him clearly to be highly narcissistic and I suspect he would be easy to classify as a psychopath.

I was slightly surprised that there was not more footage of Lance having an outburst at someone. Possibly he is very controlled in what he shows depending upon who is around. It would fit, eh?

Overall the film is not essential, though if you are intrigued by those who are obsessed with power and will do anything and all it takes to have and hold onto power for as long as possible, to a point that they will delude themselves and spend years scrambling around to try to retrieve/retain some semblance of that power, then this is quite a rewarding watch.

Rating: 08/10.