In 2009, when director Alex Gibney set out to make a documentary about Lance Armstrong’s cycling comeback, he couldn’t have predicted what would come next. Three years later, a doping investigation found Armstrong guilty being a drugs cheat. After more than a decade of denials, Armstrong was stripped of his Tour de France titles and faced a lifetime ban from competition. He was in the midst of the ultimate fall from grace. For Gibney, it meant he had to shelve his previous project and instead he embarked on a new one, and The Armstrong Lie focuses on the cyclist’s years of deceit and what life holds for him in the future.
The documentary is captivating and real edge of your seat stuff. You need to be a sports fan but intimate knowledge of cycling or Lance Armstrong’s career isn’t important.
Gibney deserves great credit because while The Armstrong Lie is certainly damaging to Lance& #8217;s reputation, it doesn’t feel like a hatchet job. The movie is fair and measured, it’s just hard to play what Armstrong did in anything but a hugely negative light.