Icarus

                     

Bryan Fogel's Icarus is an intriguing documentary on doping in sports. Fogel is a high level amateur cyclist who, in Super Size Me fashion, endeavors to use steroids in order to test whether it will help his athletic performance. The results are ambivalent, but his quest leads him to connect with Grigory Rodchenkov, the director of Russia's main drug detection lab. Rodchenkov seems all too eager to help Fogel mask the drugs in his urine and soon invites Fogel to his lab in Moscow.

The friendship that develops between the two men becomes the crux of the film, especially when Rodchenkov runs afoul of WADA, the antidoping organization formed to monitor athletes. Rodchenkov has information that implicates high officials in the Russian government and enlists Fogel's help in fleeing the country. Fogel gets Rodchenkov out of Russia and finds a safe house for him, fearing reprisals from Putin's henchmen.

As any casual fan of Olympic sports knows, the revelations of doping by Russian athletes is a dog bites man story. Fogel interweaves interviews, news footage, and custom made animation to tell the tale. His interchanges with Rodchenkov make this documentary stand out, but also raise issues of objectivity. From the get go, Rodchenkov seems to be a charming con man who tells people what they want to hear. I have no problem suspecting Putin and his underlings of all sorts of perfidy, the evidence is pretty clear, but Fogle suffers from tunnel vision. At the end of Icarus, Rodchenkov has forsaken his wife, children. and country in order to enter our federal witness protection program. Whether this is a just dessert is not something one can fathom from this interesting, yet murky documentary.