Alex Holmes: Stop at Nothing

… the Lance Armstrong Story, to include the subtitle, was screened last night at the DR2 Dokumania, whose editors apparently do not hesitate to bring sport documentaries during events like Wimbledon (last week ”Serena” (Williams) was shown), and now, when the first stages of Tour de France are broadcast on tv screens all over, and is very popular in Denmark, a documentary about Lance Armstrong. One should think that there was enough sport on the channels, but here came another documentary on Lance Armstrong. I am sure many do remember the Alex Gibney documentary, where the director was finishing a portrait of the bicycle superman, when the news broke that he had been doped, confessed by himself in an Oprah show. In 2013. The director went back to Armstrong and made an interview with him that became the backbone of a film that shows a lot of material from the Tour with Armstrong in the winning role.

There is much less bicycling in this documentary that has its focus on the portrait of man – who happens to be an athlete – who is characterised by one of the many interviewed as a sociopath, who made his own myth, who bought victories, broke every decent rule of ”normal” friendship, shouted at one former team mate after the other, when they had suggested that he was doped, used his cancer illness in the foreground when going public… The film goes step by step into a case that we have heard about so many times, and is merciless in its portrait of the (lack of) human qualities of the Shakespearean Armstrong. No sympathy at all. I would not say that I had that for him in Gibney’s film that in a way makes him an archetype of a madman, who gets away with all king of lies without any scruples whatsoever.

As usual for the Dokumania series – stylistically a formatted, designed tv documentary.

For Danish readers – the film is available for a period on dr.dk

Australia, 2014, 90 mins.