Cast: David Strathairn, Brenton Thwaites, Yael Grobglas, Charlbi Dean Kriek, Hill Harper, Bobby Di Cicco
Paul Asher (Thwaites) is a talented young journalist whose coverage of the war in Afghanistan has brought him a measure of acclaim and a good position at the newspaper he works for. He writes religious, faith-based articles, but while his career is going well, his marriage to Sarah (Grobglas) is failing, and his own faith is crumbling in the wake of his experiences in Afghanistan. Not knowing how to resolve any of the issues he’s facing, he finds some distraction in an interview with a man claiming to be God (Strathairn). Paul arranges to meet the man on three consecutive days for thirty minutes at a time. On the first day, the man blithely avoids answering Paul’s direct questions, and poses plenty of his own that Paul finds himself responding to. Later, at home, Sarah’s absence leads him to the realisation that she has left him. Meeting the man again the next day, the interview becomes more adversarial, with “God” insisting that he is there to help Paul, but with Paul refusing to believe him. Confused and scared by the effect the interviews are having on him, Paul struggles to come to terms with the very real possibility that this man really is God…
In An Interview With God, the Almighty is a middle-aged man in a bland suit who dispenses axioms with all the dexterity of someone used to bamboozling the people he meets. In the more than capable hands of David Strathairn, he also conforms to the idea that God is unknowable, even when God Himself is telling you all you need to know about Him – or isn’t. This is at the heart of the initial mystery of whether the man really is the One True God, or whether he’s just a con artist looking to exploit Paul’s emotional problems for unknown reasons. But this being a Christian movie first and foremost, it doesn’t take long for the mystery to be jettisoned and God’s identity to be confirmed (it happens during the first interview). What follows is a jittery, dramatically unstable examination of faith and how its loss can have a profoundly negative effect on our lives, and particularly in relation to personal trauma. However, Paul’s experiences in Afghanistan are never explored in a way that would allow us to have any insights into what ails him, and his failing marriage hinges more on Sarah’s feelings than his own. He may be in pain, but – and here’s the irony – we have to take it on faith that he is.
The script – by Ken Aguado – does its best to explore notions of salvation and free will, but skims over questions such as why do bad things happen to good people (the answer? They just do). With God answering Paul’s questions often with another question, their conversations soon feel like empty existential banter tricked out to sound illuminating and profound. Also, such is the amount of cod-philosophical repetition in these scenes, it’s hard to decide if Aguado and director Perry Lang were aware that this approach was stifling the material, and making it feel stilted. In the end, the movie opts for a literal answer to the question of God’s identity when a more ambivalent one would have suited the material better. As the embattled Paul, Thwaites acquits himself well but is hampered by his character lacking sufficient depth for us to care about him except superficially, while Strathairn opts to play God as a kind of exasperated guidance counselor. Both actors are good in their roles, but mostly this is against the odds, as their characters remain ciphers throughout. With artifice increasingly the order of the day, and faith sometimes treated as an abstract concept, the movie ends on a feelgood note that it hasn’t quite earned, or is deserving of.
Rating: 5/10 – the tagline asks, What Would You Ask? but this is as profound as An Interview With God ever gets, thanks to a wayward, not fully realised screenplay, and some awkwardly staged scenes between Paul and his boss (Harper) (and Paul and Sarah… and Paul and God…); in the end it proves nothing except that God continues to work in mysterious ways – if you believe in that sort of thing – and none more so than in allowing this movie to be made as it is.
Cast: Kristen Bell, Mamie Gummer, Martin Starr, Alex Shaffer, Joshua Harto, David Lambert, Amy Madigan, Adam LeFevre, John Finn, Paulie Litt, Sendhil Ramamurthy
Fast approaching thirty, Leigh London (Bell) is a journalist working for the Associated Press in New York City. When a piece she writes about a tiger cub kept as a pet in someone’s home isn’t given the prominence she feels it deserves, she takes issue with her boss (Ramamurthy) – who is also her lover. When she learns he’s newly engaged to someone else, it proves too much, and she decides to return to her family home and rethink what she’s going to do. She takes a job as a lifeguard, and re-connects with some old friends, including art appraiser Todd (Starr), and school vice principal Mel (Gummer). Through her new job, Leigh comes to know a couple of teenage boys – artistic Matt (Shaffer), and skateboarder Jason (Lambert). Both boys want to quit school and head for Vermont, but a burgeoning relationship with Jason means Leigh doesn’t want him to go. With their friendship becoming more and more serious, it causes problems for Mel: as vice principal she has a duty to report any inappropriate relationships involving a student. But Leigh’s need for Jason to stay has tragic consequences…
The feature debut from writer/director Liz W. Garcia, The Lifeguard is a tough sell of a movie, a pained and painful examination of one woman’s headlong rush into self-pity, and the inappropriate behaviour that she uses to make herself feel better. It’s hard to think of another movie that has its central character behave in such a selfish fashion, and which still asks the audience to view her actions with sympathy and understanding. It’s a difficult ask, as Garcia paints Leigh as a victim right from the start, whether it’s in the way she throws away her job without a second thought, or the fact that she does nothing to express her anger at being so poorly treated by her boss. Back in her hometown there are plenty of moments where we see Leigh looking forlorn or thoughtful or pensive, but while you might expect these moments to be examples of Leigh planning her next move, instead, Garcia has her use Matt and Jason to score some pot. She also involves Mel, who with her husband, John (Harto), is trying to have a baby, and whose position as vice principal becomes instantly compromised.
That Leigh does all this – as well as just turning up at her parents’ house without notice – and without any consideration of her friends, or her family, and especially Jason, harms the movie irreparably. There’s no sense of responsibility, only a need for self-gratification that Garcia is unable to offset with any feelings of regret until it’s too late. This should have been a movie where the main character uses returning home as a chance to gather their thoughts and reconnect with a simpler time, but Leigh makes everything worse with every effort she makes. She makes fun of her mother’s attempts to start a new fitness business, she causes a wedge between Mel and John to develop, she keeps Jason in town out of selfish need, and enters into yet another illicit relationship. Sadly Bell, though she’s a more than capable actress, can’t find a way to mitigate against the choices Garcia has made for her character. Left stranded by the narrative, the actress does her best, but like her fellow cast members, she’s unable to make this memorable or affecting or even partway satisfactory.
Rating: 4/10 – with the indie clichés coming thick and fast, and in service to a script that lacks the depth needed to make it more compelling (or just agreeable), The Lifeguard wastes any opportunity it had to provide viewers with a convincing tale of one woman’s emotional downward spiral; passable if you’re in an undemanding mood, it’s a movie that tests the patience and the charity of the viewer at every turn.
Cast: Chloë Grace Moretz, Thomas Mann, Richard Armitage, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jenny Slate, Tyler Perry, Navid Negahban, Robert Moloney, Vincent Gale, Janet Kidder, Alex Zahara, Jenn McLean-Angus
Susannah Cahalan (Moretz) is a young reporter working at the New York Post. Life for Susannah is good: she’s working at her dream job, she still has the love of her divorced parents, Tom (Armitage) and Rhona (Moss), and she’s in a relationship with budding musician Stephen (Mann). At the Post, her boss, Richard (Perry), is encouraging and acknowledges her good work, while one of her colleagues, Margo (Slate), has become a firm friend. But one day, while celebrating her birthday with her parents, their respective new partners, and Stephen, Susannah experiences a dissociative moment where she’s unable to focus on what’s being said or whether she should be responding. The moment passes without anyone noticing, and Susannah forgets about it, thinking it’s just a one-off.
But it happens again. And again. And again. Soon, Susannah is experiencing these dissociative moments five or six times a day, but she doesn’t mention them to anyone. She does mention bites on her arm that she thinks are caused by bed bugs, but when anyone else looks at her arm, they don’t see anything there. One night, while she’s with Stephen, Susannah has a fit, but while he gets her to hospital, the tests they carry out don’t reveal anything wrong. She sees a doctor (Gale) who has further tests carried out, but when they come back normal as well, his diagnosis is that Susannah is drinking too much and her symptoms are those of alcohol withdrawal. Tom and Rhona aren’t impressed by this, and they take turns in looking after Susannah at their respective homes. But Susannah’s beahviour worsens and she becomes paranoid and delusional. Another fit ensures a longer stay in hospital, where her condition worsens. As she edges into a semi-catatonic state, the hospital staff admit they have no idea what’s causing Susannah’s illness. It’s only the last-minute attendance of physician Dr Najjar (Negahban) that offers Susannah a chance at regaining her life, and finding a solution – and a cure – to the illness that’s crippling her.
The disease that was eventually diagnosed as causing the dissociative moments, the hallucinations, the manic outbursts, the paranoia and the semi-catatonia, was anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. It was also a disease that had only been identified a mere three years before Susannah Cahalan was diagnosed as having it. Her subsequent memoir, Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness (2012), told her story from the viewpoint of when she woke up after having been in hospital after a month and couldn’t remember anything that she’d done, or had happened, during that period. Gerard Barrett’s adaptation of Cahalan’s book eschews that approach for a more linear, traditional way of presenting her story. It’s not an entirely surprising direction for the movie to take, but it does mean that many of the standard tropes associated with good old-fashioned disease-of-the-week TV movies are all present and correct.
It also means that the viewer has to contend with an ill-advised and unalterably trite opening voice over that has Susannah forewarn them that something is going to go terribly, terribly wrong (as if we couldn’t have already worked that one out for ourselves), and a succession of scenes that reinforce the idea that Susannah is leading a wonderful life. But when Susannah begins “zoning out” she doesn’t say anything to anyone, and attempts to carry on as if her “zoning out” is a minor inconvenience. But then the disease pulls the rug out from under her: an assignment that she believes she’s written on a Thursday for inclusion in the Post on Saturday, is rubbished by her boss on the ensuing Monday – the day he’s received it. Watching Brain on Fire, this is the point at which many viewers will be saying to themselves, Why doesn’t she say anything? Sure, she goes to the doctor but when that proves inconclusive of anything and her illness begins to worsen, her behaviour is written off as either an alcohol problem or potentially psychiatric in nature.
That the various medical professionals who examine Susannah fail to diagnose her condition properly, makes for another staple of this kind of movie, but while it’s a familiar presentation, what makes it particularly invidious on this occasion is a caveat that the movie avoids providing. Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis was only identified three years before Susannah was affected by it, and the number of patients who had been diagnosed up until then was relatively small. This allows for Dr Najjar’s actions to appear almost miraculous in relation to the rapid decline that Susannah experiences (in her book if not in the movie; here her illness and its development is allowed to take place over what seems far longer than a month). Again, this is tried and tested stuff, as predictable as it is anodyne, and Barrett makes sure the audience knows just how terrible it all is by having Moretz looking spaced out and/or wasted at every opportunity.
Susannah herself is given short shrift by Barrett’s script, with too much emphasis on the illness instead of the character. This leaves Moretz adrift for much of the movie, looking vacuous for the most part, and never ensuring that the audience really cares about Susannah and her plight. As she stumbles through her life, effectively dismantling it from the inside out as she goes, Susannah (as portrayed by Moretz) is a helpless witness to what’s happening, and where this should offer some poignancy or even outright sympathy, it never quite pays off as it should. The viewer can readily acknowledge that what’s happening to Susannah is terrible, but beyond that it’s difficult to maintain any empathy for her. Moretz struggles with a number of scenes where she’s under the influence of her illness and either self-diagnosing – “I’m bipolar; I have multiple personality disorder” – or attempting to deal with it on her own. By the time Susannah is in a semi-catatonic state, the audience could be excused for breathing a sigh of relief: now we’re getting somewhere…
The characters around Susannah are mostly stereotypical, with Stephen’s initial self-absorption giving way to his staying resolutely at her bedside, while Tom agonises over her situation at every turn and Rhona acts calmly yet decisively and keeps it all together. Her doctors are either blasé or baffled, Margo is the concerned friend who makes just the one visit to her in the hospital, and her boss, Richard, behaves in a manner that stretches credulity as when Susannah botches an important interview and he doesn’t fire her. Throughout all this, these characters remain cyphers, given just enough to do to avoid being bystanders to it all, but at the same time, not having any depth that would prompt a connection with the audience.
Barrett’s script lacks the edge or the energy to make Susannah’s story compelling enough for more than a cursory investment by the viewer, and there are several stretches – mostly where Susannah wanders the streets of New York in an apparent daze – where the editing needed to be more judicious. As a director, Barrett doesn’t seem to know how to build on the story to make it more affecting and effective, and there are times when the movie’s pace founders and becomes less measured than at other times. All in all, the movie fails to engage properly with its audience, and though it’s a valiant attempt by Barrett et al to tell a fascinating story, there’s not enough attention to detail, and not enough in place to make this stand out from the crowd.
Rating: 5/10 – with its less than gripping plot and inconsistent narrative, Brain on Fire is persistent in its efforts to bring its audience on board, though its under-developed script makes it hard to pull that off; Moretz’s strained performance, the movie’s pedestrian tone, and its preponderance of fugue moments, all serve to make this a potentially intriguing movie that never quite makes the most of its incredible real life story.
Cast: Tina Fey, Margot Robbie, Martin Freeman, Alfred Molina, Christopher Abbott, Billy Bob Thornton, Nicholas Braun, Stephen Peacocke, Sheila Vand, Evan Jonigkeit, Fahim Anwar, Josh Charles, Cherry Jones
If you’re a fan of Tina Fey, and have been waiting to see Whiskey Tango Foxtrot with some anticipation after seeing the trailer, be warned! This isn’t the out and out comedy with occasional dramatic moments that the trailer makes it out to be. Instead it’s the opposite, a drama with occasional comedic moments that fit awkwardly for the most part with the movie’s main focus, the true story of one woman journalist’s stay in Afghanistan and the experiences she had there.
Fey plays Kim Baker, the fictionalised version of Kim Barker (why the slight name change?). In 2004 and dissatisfied with the way her career in television news is going, she takes up the offer of an assignment reporting from Afghanistan. Taking a huge chance – she doesn’t know the language or the customs, and has never reported from a war zone before – Baker is assigned a driver/interpreter, Fahim (Abbott), and a personal bodyguard, Nic (Peacocke). She’s also grateful to find another female journalist there in the form of Tanya Vanderpoel (Robbie).
At first, Kim’s inexperience doesn’t do her any favours but she soon begins to gauge the lie of the land and the feelings of the US soldiers stationed there. Her status as a woman helps her gain access to news stories that other (male) journalists and reporters are unable to gather, and as time goes by, she earns the respect of her fellow journalists, Fahim, and even General Hollanek (Thornton), the head of the US forces. She also takes risks when she feels it necessary, such as leaving an armoured vehicle when the convoy she’s in is attacked and capturing the event on video. The only downside of her experience thus far is when she catches her boyfriend (Charles) with another woman during an unscheduled video call.
Her sudden availability has its upside, though. It allows her to manipulate local Afghan minister Ali Massoud Sadiq (Molina), into providing her with background intelligence, though Fahim warns her that she is becoming like the drug addicts he used to treat before the war: willing to do anything to get a story. She also develops a relationship with Scottish journalist Iain MacKelpie (Freeman); at first it’s only serious on his side, but Kim becomes attached to him, and their relationship deepens. As the two get to know each other, Iain tells her of an opportunity to interview a local warlord. The only drawback is his location: on the other side of a mountain pass that is closed due to heavy snow. While they wait for the snows to clear, Kim finds herself having to justify her continuing presence in Afghanistan, and travels to New York to state her case in person. There she discovers an unexpected rival for her “spot”, and also learns that Iain has been abducted for ransom…
Barker’s story – recounted in her book The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan – is remarkable for how “Pakistan and Afghanistan would ultimately become more all-consuming than any relationship [she] had ever had.” Sadly, Robert Carlock’s screenplay only manages to skirt round this attachment, preferring instead to imply an unrequited attraction between Kim and Fahim that can never be consummated, and an actual relationship with Iain that sees Fey look uncomfortable whenever she and Freeman end up in a clinch. This is one of many components that the movie never finds a satisfactory place for, and the result is an uneven, sporadically effecive piece that does occasional justice to Barker’s story, and Fey’s skills as an actress.
As with so many true stories adapted for the screen, the movie changes a lot, and in the process loses sight of what works best. Kim’s back story is predictably sketchy – why is she so miserable about her job?; how did she get to a point where the idea of covering a war in a far-off country became her best option? – and it’s jettisoned just as predictably once she arrives in Kabul. The movie continues in the same vein, offering brief soundbites in lieu of solid characterisations, and making only intermittent attempts to provide motivations for the actions of its principals (when it can be bothered to go beyond the superficial). By failing to provide any of its characters with any depth – Thornton’s General is so lightweight he’s practically gossamer-thin – it becomes hard to care about anyone, even Kim. Aside from a sincere yet unnecessary subplot involving a wounded soldier (Jonigkeit), Whiskey Tango Foxtrot rarely gives the viewer a reason to believe that any of Barker’s memoir has been adapted with a view to making it appear earnest or artless.
Fey’s obvious forté is comedy, and when the movie needs her to be, she’s very funny indeed. But she’s not quite so confident in the dramatic stretches, and it’s these moments that help undermine the movie further. Fey only comes across as comfortable in these situations if she can put a comedic spin on things, and the script lets her do this far too often for the audience to be comfortable as well. In support, Freeman puts in a good enough performance but isn’t given enough to do that’s memorable or fresh, while Robbie flits in and out of the narrative just enough for viewers to remember she’s there, and to remind Fey as Kim that in Afghanistan she’s gone from a solid six to a nine (so much for female solidarity in a male-dominated society). As for Molina, he plays Sadiq as a lecherous horny goat, a character two steps removed from a Carry On movie racial stereotype; it’s not quite a completely offensive portrayal, but both Molina and directors Ficarra and Requa should have known better.
Despite all this, the movie is amiable enough, and under Ficarra and Requa’s stewardship makes for an undemanding viewing experience. Like Fey they seem more at home when dealing with the more humorous aspects of Barker’s time in Afghanistan (Pakistan is left out of the equation entirely), though they redeem themselves in terms of the movie’s look. Along with DoP Xavier Grobet, the directing duo give the movie a rich visual style that offers crisp compositions at almost every turn, and a warm colour palette that refutes the idea of Afghanistan as a ravaged, war-blighted country lacking in beauty. At least they got that right.
Rating: 5/10 – an awkward mix of drama and comedy where neither comes out on top and where each ends up countering the other, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot isn’t as bad as it may seem, but it’s also not as good as it could have been; fans of Fey may be satisfied by her performance here, and she’s to be applauded for trying something outside her comfort zone, but there’s too many times when she doesn’t do the (admittedly) thin material any justice.
Cast: Eric Bana, Ricky Gervais, Vera Farmiga, Kelly Macdonald, Kevin Pollak, Raúl Castillo, America Ferrara, Benjamin Bratt, Mimi Kuzyk
Comedians and Netflix – a good combination? After Adam Sandler’s The Ridiculous 6 (2015), we now have Ricky Gervais’ Special Correspondents, a movie so leaden and uninspired it makes Sandler’s movie look like a masterpiece (okay, that may be taking it a bit too far). A remake of the French movie Envoyés très spéciaux (2009), this transplants the original’s Paris-Iraq locations for New York-Ecuador, and in the process leaves out the humour that would have made it halfway watchable.
Gervais’ decision to make this movie serves only to highlight his inability to write, act and direct a full-length movie and show consistency in any one department. As the meek, self-negating Ian Finch, a sound engineer for a New York-based radio station, Gervais plays yet another sad-sack loser with zero confidence and a view of himself as a complete nobody. Gervais has played this character, and variations of it, several times now, and it’s as tired as the script he’s put together and somehow managed to get financing for. (If you really want to see just how bad an actor Gervais can be, check out the party scene early on, where it’s just him and Vera Farmiga; see how many grimaces and facial expressions you can spot that are exact replicas of the ones he uses when hosting the Golden Globe Awards… or playing David Brent in The Office.)
Gervais’ painful attempts at acting aside, it’s his script that deserves the most criticism, ranging as it does from occasionally interesting to crudely simplistic. The basic story – radio journalist and his sound man fake reports from war-torn Ecuador – is lifted wholesale from the French original, and even though that movie wasn’t the most well received movie ever, it’s still better than the ponderous, laugh-free adaptation that Gervais gives us here. Yes, it has a predictable plot; yes, it has characters who are two-dimensional at best; and yes, you couldn’t care about any of them even if your life depended on it, but if after all that it was funny, really laugh-out-loud funny, then it could have been forgiven for all those things. But although Gervais has made room for moments that are clearly meant to be funny, in reality they aren’t, and the movie lurches from one almost-humorous scene to another with all the grace of a punch-drunk boxer fighting his reflection.
It doesn’t help that, Kelly Macdonald’s sweet-on-Ian character, Claire Maddox aside, the other characters are mostly unlikeable, from radio journalist Frank Bonneville (Bana) whose grandstanding and willingness to get the story no matter what makes him look and sound arrogant and unfeeling, to Ian’s wife, Eleanor (Farmiga), a listless shrew who only comes to self-aggrandising life when her husband appears to have been kidnapped by rebel forces. Farmiga, who has the misfortune of wearing one of recent cinema’s most unflattering wigs, does what she can with the role but there’s no subtlety in a part that calls for simpering insincerity at every other turn, and bald-faced self-promotion in between. The same goes for Bana, a more than capable actor here reduced to the role of awkward straight man to Gervais, and who has to spend a lot of screen time waiting for Gervais to deliver the comedic goods (so he gets to wait around a lot).
In support, Pollak is the radio boss who cares about the legality of a story’s procurement one minute, but is willing to capitalise on the possibility of Frank and Ian being killed the next, while Castillo and Ferrara are the Latin couple, Domingo and Brigida, who help Frank and Ian fabricate their reports. What few laughs there are in the movie are delivered by the couple, playing a couple of innocents who haven’t quite grasped their roles in Frank and Ian’s deception. And in what must have taken him a whole morning to film, Bratt turns up as Frank’s arch-nemesis, TV journalist John Baker, who co-opts one of Frank’s broadcasts as if he knew all about the content all along (Baker is probably meant to provide an element of satire, but instead he comes across as an easy target for Gervais’ mistrust of the Press).
Of course, events dictate that Frank and Ian have to go to Ecuador so that they can “return” to New York and avoid losing their jobs and ending up in jail. It’s during this period in the movie that Gervais’ deficiencies as a director show themselves more clearly than elsewhere. Even with the aid of experienced DoP Terry Stacey, Gervais still manages to present the viewer with shots and scenes that are poorly framed, and there’s a scene with Gervais and Bana where Frank reveals a secret that is so badly assembled it feels like rehearsal footage has somehow made its way permanently into the final movie.
As mentioned when discussing the trailer, Gervais track record on the big screen has not exactly been luminous, but here he’s come up with a project that will likely mean it will be a long time before he’s asked to write, direct and star in a movie of his own choosing once again. If Gervais has an aptitude for anything it’s for observational comedy, and Special Correspondents doesn’t fit that mold, which makes it even harder to understand why he chose to take it on in the first place.
Rating: 3/10 – dire and acutely unfunny, Special Correspondents is yet another English-language remake that shouldn’t have happened (and how many more of those will we see this year?), and shouldn’t have to be watched; Gervais never gets to grips with what his movie is about, or where the laughs should go, leaving the viewer resigned to the idea (from very early on) that this is a movie that has stalled before it’s even started.
Cast: Ben Foster, Chris O’Dowd, Guillaume Canet, Jesse Plemons, Lee Pace, Denis Ménochet, Dustin Hoffman, Edward Hogg, Elaine Cassidy, Laura Donnelly, Peter Wight
In 1993, Irish sports journalist David Walsh (O’Dowd) met and interviewed Lance Armstrong (Foster) for the first time. Armstong was a newcomer to the Tour de France, and when asked by Walsh what he hoped to achieve, the young rider’s answer was, “to finish”. He did, but so far down the field that he made next to no impact on his rivals. Armstorng became aware that his stronger, faster adversaries were able to beat him because their blood was more richly oxygenated than his… and that there was a reason for this.
The reason was a banned substance called erythropoietin – EPO. It was administered by the advising doctor of the team winning all the Tour de France stages (and the tournament over all). Armstrong persuaded the team’s doctor, Michele Ferrari (Canet), to provide him with EPO as well. But before his “treatment” could make a distinct difference in his performance, Armstrong was diagnosed with stage three testicular cancer in October 1996. He underwent an intensive series of treatments that involved the removal of a diseased testicle, four cycles of chemotherapy, and surgery to remove several brain lesions. Amazingly, in February 1997, Armstrong was given the all clear. And he was determined to return to professional cycling.
But he had no team to come back to. Eventually he hooked up with the American Team Postal, and soon he was winning races, and impressively so. And two years later, in 1999, he won the Tour de France for the first in what would be seven consecutive years. But while everyone celebrated Armstrong’s tenacious comeback and fierce will to win, it was journalist David Walsh who suspected that something wasn’t quite right. How, he asked, had a middling rider with unimpressive riding times, and after an albeit short battle with cancer, returned to cycling only fitter, faster, and stronger, and been able to win the Tour de France so easily (he won by seven minutes and thirty-seven seconds)? And why wasn’t anyone else asking the question? And, more importantly, why wasn’t anyone asking the question when Armstrong kept winning year after year?
There are many reasons, as it happens, but the main one was that Armstrong became so successful, so famous as the face of cycling, that no one within the industry was able (or willing) to challenge him, even the officials in charge of the Cycling Federation. So powerful was he that when he tested positive for corticosteroids he was able to get his personal team to supply backdated prescriptions for cortisone as a treatment for saddle sores, and so avoid any charges of drug taking. Throughout his career, Armstrong was able to bluff and bully and wriggle his way out of any accusations of drug taking, blood doping or any other form of cheating. He became famous for avoiding the question of whether he’d taken drugs by saying he’d “never tested positive for performance enhancing drugs”.
As Armstrong did take EPO on many occasions, so The Program shows him doing it over and over as well. In fact it shows Armstrong shooting up or drawing off his own blood on several more occasions than is absoutely necessary. We know it’s endemic to the sport because we’re told this almost right away, and it loses its dramatic effectiveness very quickly. It’s a problem the movie suffers from throughout, a lack of dramatic effectiveness, and this in turn leads to the movie becoming perfunctory, and in places quite dull. It also makes the mistake of focusing too much on Armstrong – an obvious mistake, but one the makers should have avoided.
The problem with Armstrong as your main character is that no matter how much you try and shade his character with visits to a children’s cancer ward, or have him ride out into the Texas desert to stare meaningfully at naturally occurring pools of water, he’s still the villain of the piece and the architect of his own downfall. And yes, sometimes that’s enough, but even David Walsh, in his book on which the movie is partly based, Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong, couldn’t answer the one question that the average viewer is likely to be asking all the way through: just why did he do it? Because, without an answer, Armstrong just goes from ambitious cyclist to arrogant, self-serving bastard in the drop of a hat.
And once he’s there the script by John Hodge stops looking for answers and becomes a braodly faithful retelling of the facts as they transpired once Floyd Landis (Plemons) joined Team Postal and everything began to unravel. The complexities of Armstrong’s story are smoothed over and/or ignored, Walsh’s tenacity in the face of almost everyone in his profession treating him like a pariah is given short shrift, and the nature of cycling’s unspoken acceptance of the cheating going on under its nose – these are all passed over in favour of following Armstrong from one non-illuminating scene to another. Even Foster, normally a more than capable actor, can’t stop his performance from becoming tedious by the end; it’s almost as if even he’s recognised that he can’t make any more out of Lance’s character as written.
With the script continually taking a backward step when it should have been ploughing forward, and with no sense of outrage at what Armstrong did – and encouraged others to do – the movie lacks passion and feels remote from its subject matter. There are a number of people who played a large part in Walsh’s investigation into doping in cycling, and while they are represented, they’re also marginalised along with the very important knowledge they have about Armstrong’s activities. It was a very big thing when Armstrong admitted that he took performance enhancing drugs when asked by a doctor during his cancer treatment, but here it’s referenced and then ignored as if of little or no importance. And then there’s Armstrong’s appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, a move he thought would help him retain the public’s admiration for him, but which backfired on him spectacularly when Oprah wouldn’t accept that he was remorseful.
It’s when moments like these are not given their due place in proceedings that The Program stumbles and fails to achieve any relevance as a recounting of Armstrong’s career. He was a lot more manipulative and a lot less caring of others, even his closest confidantes, and he had no qualms about trying to ruin the lives of those he thought weren’t being “team players”. His antipathy towards Walsh, at least, is given some expression, particularly when his one of his colleagues stops him from travelling between Tour de France stages with them as they used to, a good example of how Lance got what Lance wanted. But otherwise, the movie manages only to keep Armstrong at a remove from others, and in consequence from the audience.
Unable to find a way around the sedate nature of the script, Frears is left with trying to coax good performances out of his cast, and make the cycling sequences exciting to watch. As mentioned above, Foster can only do so much, but he’s very good in the earlier, pre-cancer scenes, showing Armstrong’s determination and will to succeed to very good effect. O’Dowd has a limited number of scenes in which to make an impression, and two of those involve him answering a phone and acting surprised. As the doping Doctor Ferrari, Canet is the movie’s liveliest, most effusive character, but his appearance and his demeanour make him look like he’s stepped out of a Seventies porn movie. Pace struts and swaggers his way through as Armstrong’s lawyer, and Ménochet makes the most of playing Armstrong’s righ hand man on the team, Johan Bruyneel. Only Plemons makes any kind of an impact, as the morally confused farmboy who joins the team but finds himself cut adrift when he gets “caught” taking testosterone.
On a visual level the movie works better when it’s out of doors, and by and large it successfully recreates the buzz of the races, though it can be off-putting when you realise you’re watching archival footage instead of a re-enactment. Foster looks persuasive in these scenes (even if you’re pretty sure the other cyclists have been told to go slower), and there’s at least a sense that this isn’t “fun” but quite punishing in its own unique way. Inside however, and the movie seems cramped – sometimes stifled – as if Frears’ visual creativity had deserted him. But by the time you notice all this, you probably won’t care too much, what with all the other deficiencies on display.
Rating: 5/10 – a middling, disappointing examination of one man’s renunciation of professional ethics and personal morality, The Program rarely succeeds in raising any indignation at Armstrong’s attitude or behaviour; for a more fastidious, much more involving look at Armstrong’s fall from grace, you’d be far better off watching The Armstrong Lie (2013) than this pallid endeavour.
