94 | Cycling World
Film Review
THE PROGRAM
THE NEW ARMSTRONG FILM
By Jeremy Henderson A director and editor of corporate films who loves film and likes cycling when he can summon the energy .
Photos from Canal Studios
Director Stephen Frears Running Time 104 minutes Certificate 15 On general release from October 2015
Lance Armstrong - a hero , a cheat , a winner , a loser ? Beating cancer is one thing but for a one-day racer to become a grand tour contender ? That is one step too far for the journalist David Walsh , on whose book , Seven Deadly Sins , this film is based .
Thirty minutes in we are on the 1999 Tour de France . Johan Bruyneel , the team manager , instructs Lance to go for it and we see him accelerating uphill , slicing through the field . It is exhilarating and as we cut to the press tent the journalists are suddenly caught by the moment and the enormity of the Armstrong attack . Walsh however , played by Chris O ’ Dowd , stares at the screen , mouth open , disbelief in his eyes . It is an engaging scene as are many of the sequences in this film and yet I left the cinema feeling somewhat shortchanged , realising that I had seen some exhilarating footage as well as determined performances , but had learnt almost precisely nothing .
Ben foster as Armstrong has some great moments and at times his facial twitches capture the one-time hero in an uncanny way . We are allowed to witness his attempts to practice the line , “ I ’ ve never tested positive for performance enhancing drugs ” in his bathroom mirror in what feels like a strange homage to De Niro ’ s famous scene in Taxi Driver . When at a book signing a fan thanks him so sincerely for his example Foster shows Armstrong visibly struggling with the deception of his own narrative .
But for the most part the film simply drives on desperately ticking-off the critical moments in a story that is frantically crammed into 104 minutes . It is nonetheless an entertaining movie that has worked hard at set pieces . Some of the racing is visceral , whether riding over the cobblestones in rain or approaching surging corners in the Alps . Original footage blends well and the riding always feels authentic and exciting . But there is also the other story to tell , that of Walsh ’ s determination to unveil the superstar as a cheat . Here the film is less convincing and although O ’ Dowd is a believable character the Sunday Times scenes are thin . The doping doctor , Michele Ferrari , is little more than a pantomime villain and although Jesse Plemons is very watchable playing the teammate of Armstrong , Floyd Landis , his morality tale is less than convincing .
Stephen Frears directs and claims to have known nothing about cycling or Armstrong before this project . Assuming most of the audience might have seen the news in recent years then the danger is that nothing much is added to this sorry tale whereas those who know little of the details may struggle to appreciate the impact of several characters .
This is a decent watch that any cycling enthusiast will struggle to resist but the plot points insist that we keep driving relentlessly forward leaving us breathlessly entertained and none the wiser .