The Armstrong Lie

In 2009, documentarian Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) followed embattled cyclist Lance Armstrong on his Tour de France comeback attempt, until new doping allegations halted the project. Gibney picked it back up as a very different film in early 2013, when Armstrong finally admitted that his seven Tour victories were achieved through blood doping and performance-enhancing drugs. From there, Gibney tells a more artificially outraged narrative of Armstrong's long history of lies and extensive cover-ups, which left several ruined lives in their wake. Armstrong's story is still a fascinating if familiar tale of dual personalities exposed on a public stage, but it is hard to take Gibney's moral indignation seriously. The Armstrong Lie alternately paints 2009 Alex Gibney as either shrewdly aware of Armstrong's lies or utterly duped by them, when they actually gave new life to a redundant hero-worship doc.