The Program

Irish sports writer David Walsh concludes that what Lance Armstrong is doing at the Tour de France is not physiologically possible. The film tracks Armstrong from his post-cancer comeback to his confession, running alongside Walsh's hunt for evidence. Its real subject is not doping but the agreement of silence that made doping possible. Doctors, teammates, sponsors and most of the press knew something at some point and chose not to say it, and the film brings that shared choice out one face at a time. The form interleaves documentary footage with staged material; the race scenes are shot to match the texture of actual Tour coverage. Ben Foster took real performance-enhancing drugs for the role. He ran a condensed program under the supervision of a doctor and a nutritionist, and neither his director nor his fellow actors knew about it during the shoot. Afterwards he described a long physical recovery and said the doping affected his mind as well. Stephen Frears directs. The screenplay draws mainly on Walsh's 2012 book Seven Deadly Sins. Chris O'Dowd plays Walsh and Guillaume Canet plays the doctor Michele Ferrari. Who it is for: viewers who like sports journalism and stories of institutional cover-up. Who it is not for: anyone hoping to get inside Armstrong; the film watches him from outside, coldly and on purpose.