The Program

A reasonable drama that has a good mix of recreated scenes and actual TdF footage which combined with decent acting makes for an entertaining film.

63.00

This is an ok biopic. Its a bit bland and not especially exciting as such, for a sports drama but its, you guessed it, ok. I like Chris O'Dowd, so when I heard he was in it, I wanted to see it. I do like a good biopic and character focussed dramas, so this should have been interesting but it felt just a bit too long drawn out and given its got a running time of slightly under an hour and three quarters long, that does say something.

Slightly shallow and one-sided maybe, but I found it very entertaining. Veteran director Stephen Frears knows which buttons to push, and Ben Foster brings his usual intensity to this arguably boogeyman-Lance.

watch The Armstrong Lie instead

I'm not convinced. It ads nothing new to the story, which makes it like something I've already watched. *Okay

Not bad.

Maybe not as deep as it should be, it's taken to the finish line by an aptly smarmy performance courtesy of Foster.

Entertainment: 4.5/4 -- compelling drama, great acting. Spirit: 0.5/3. Sustainability: 0.5/3.

17/08/2016 @Bomontiada açık hava sineması &Demet

The Lance Armstrong scandal in a Euro-generic movie production. Feels utterly bland at first, but once they get to the core of what a despicable narcissist Lance was The Program (2015) gets kinda enjoyable. There is so much more they could have done with this fraud, but I'm just glad it got as solid as it did after fearing the worst. Ben Foster becomes the EPO-up'd Duracell bunny!

Or: The Expected Virtue of Cynicism. Starts out a promising exploration of Armstrong's bottom-up manufacture, one of the few sports films to critically examine the creation of the kind of pro athlete they make sports films about (the difference is more degree than kind), but it's in the prolonged un-making that the film proves totally inert as drama. Okay, so you firmly establish that Rocky was a free-market Drago the whole time. That idea deserves *actual* *scenes*, not TV news supercuts.

Biggest scandal in the history of sports. Not the best production to see the whole story though.