In 2009 Alex Gibney set out to make a documentary about Lance Armstrong's return to the racing circuit. Armstrong had won the Tour De France seven times and had beaten cancer. He was a winner in every respect until finally the allegations that had dogged him for years, that he had used performance enhancing drugs, caught up with him and on Oprah Winfrey's television show he finally admitted to cheating and Gibney's film, originally designed to celebrate Armstrong, became "The Armstrong Lie", as Gibney searched for reasons for his behaviour. Could it be that he simply had to become a winner whatever the cost? Gibney felt that Armstrong owed him since Armstrong had lied to him in 2009 when Gibney set out to celebrate Armstrong's career, so he continued with his film forcing Armstrong to confront his duplicitous past, (though even now Armstrong is holding some things back), and the result is this extraordinary film. "The Armstrong Lie" is the kind of film that pays tribute, not just to its subject, (though, perhaps, tribute isn't quite the right word in this case), but to the genre itself, (it's as exciting as any fictional thriller). Gibney already has an Oscar under his belt; in a just world he would have added another for this brilliant movie.

Painful insight into the sad fall from grace of one Lance Armstrong from superhero to human. For cyclists and anyone who wants to see just how far people will go to win at any cost.Never before seen interviews with Armstrong's former teammates, managers, doctors and foes. How fame and fortune took an obscure athlete, an obscure sport into a cultural icon and symbol of hope for millions around the world.I was a huge Lance fan and was in Paris with him when he won his 7th Tour. I was one of the last to finally believe that he cheated. His titles stripped and his sponsors and supporters have deserted him. A sad finish to one of the greatest stories ever told.

This movie - and the situation it chronicles - forces us to considerto what extent we can expect an even playing field - literally - when we watch sports. The athletes say, "Every one else was doing it." When fans watch NASCAR races, I hope they understand that it's a team sport. The people who built the car, the people who maintain it, the guys who change the tires, the spotters and others contribute as much or more to the win as does the driver. However, when we see an individual athlete - biker, runner, skier, etc. - compete, do we see that the "best man" wins or the performer with the best doctor, the best chemist and research department and the cleverest lawyer to get around the system, as one of the interviewees in this movie suggests.Should we accept that performance enhancements are now a part of sports, athletes and their supporters will continue to find ways to counter efforts to limit them and accept that? The destructive qualities of steroids - including their potential for violent behavior and the process Armstrong admitted using raise doubt. The drug Amstrong took and the use of blood transfusions to short-cut the body's process for communicating and responding to muscle fatigue surely must be physically destructive. However, I have long had questions about the long-term effects of professional football tackles, questions now being answered, at least in terms of head injuries. Players and fans continue to accept this.This movie may be more interesting to people who are not cycling fans but is a good exploration of a range of observers and participants.

. . . since the Oscar-winning director of TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE obviously cowers before Lance Armstrong and the Texas Mafia "Code of Omuerta" far more than he feared the U.S. military when he was making his earlier flick. Here's some of the questions Gibney is afraid to ask in THE ARMSTRONG LIE. Though he shows a fawning Barbara Walters saying "You go, boy" while encouraging Lance to destroy the lives of any truth tellers on her show THE VIEW, Gibney doesn't ask why this thoughtless TV maven isn't totally silenced immediately. Though he shows how Armstrong had employees threaten truth tellers in phone answering machine messages with murder-by-baseball-bat (while wishing that those on the side of justice also suffer cancer first), Gibney doesn't ask Armstrong if he signed a formal contract with Satan, or just has an "understanding" with Big Red. (Okay, that might be unfair, because maybe none of Armstrong's Fundamentalist backers actually BELIEVE a word of their professed theology.) Though Gibney clearly shows Armstrong admitted to testosterone, EPO, human growth hormone, and blood transfusion doping in the mid-1990s BEFORE Lance got cancer (or won any important bike races), he never asks Armstrong what the chances are that ingesting this devil's brew CAUSED his cancer in the first place! Many people who do not formally believe in Satan have faith in karma ("what goes around comes around"), but Gibney swallows the canard that Armstrong's Live Wrong Foundation IS doing ACTUAL GOOD on BLIND FAITH, never asking to see the gold standard of science: a "double-blind study" showing that a matched set of cancer patients, including half with Live Wrong contact, actually resulted in BETTER outcomes for the Live Wrong people (common sense and karma may suggest otherwise). Further, Gibney doesn't bother to ask whether Ben Franklin's 200-year-old U.S. Postal Service has been fatally wounded by the fortune lost when its Sponsoree, Armstrong, "went Postal." Finally, Gibney views Armstrong here in a vacuum, never asking him about Texas culture and how he likes his place on America's newest monument, Mount Liemore, right between LBJ (of Kennedy Assassination Cover-up fame) and the Bushes (the Elder's CIA "October Surprise" with the Iran Hostages brought Reagan to power, and the Younger is still fingered by most Americans polled for orchestrating a 9-11 cover-up). Is it a "coincidence" that all four of these Hall of Shamers are Texans? Sorry, Alex, as Jack Nicholson once said, "You just can't handle the truth!" Fortunately, as William Shakespeare wrote earlier, "The Truth will out."