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The Bicycle Thief: "The Armstrong Lie"

A documentary looks at the checkered career of cyclist Lance Armstrong

In "The Armstrong Lie," filmmaker Alex Gibney witnesses Lance Armstrong's betrayal up close and personal

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I was all set to review The Invisible Woman, just another of the many great films playing at The Grand Cinema. I spent the past week boning up on my Dickens so I could make a passable attempt at aping his writing style. Then, editor Pappi Swarner ran some ambitious, young upstart named Richard Roeper's review of The Invisible Woman instead of mine. Nice. I'm a serious film reviewer, and I'll be dead in the cold, cold ground before I let that go unnoticed! So, Pappi, here's my review of another movie - in quasi-Dickensian fashion.

Gather ‘round, good people, and I shall tell you a tale of a fellow by the name of Lance. Here was a man of humble origins who fashioned himself an alter ego by the name of "Armstrong." Whereas Lance was an unremarkable fellow, Armstrong was a veritable titan about town; commanding the respect of his countrymen and capturing the hearts of all the ladies, and, for a season, taming a fiery siren called Sheryl Crow. Indeed, Armstrong's charms were such that even the grim specter of Death itself was obliged to grant him clemency. Alas, the legend of Armstrong would not endure, for Lance wove an elaborate tapestry of deceptions and falsehoods that, when unraveled, revealed a man no more worthy of admiration than the lowliest alleyway cutpurse!

OK, I'll stop now, partly because I don't want to alienate my readership, but primarily because I don't want my mangled prose to incur the wrath of Charles Dickens' vengeful ghost.

The Armstrong Lie is the latest from prolific, Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney, (whose prior work includes We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and many others). The film chronicles professional charlatan/cyclist Lance Armstrong's fall from grace after the revelation that his superhuman athletic prowess owed to a level of pharmaceutical pseudoscience reminiscent of something out of a Michael Crichton novel.

Of course, we've already heard that story, and if this were just another rehashed retelling, I wouldn't recommend it, but The Armstrong Lie is different: It didn't start life as a criticism of Lance Armstrong, it was a commendation. In 2009, Gibney set out to document Armstrong's "comeback year," in which he trained, and presumable doped, in hopes of winning the Tour de France an unprecedented eighth time.

It didn't work out quite the way Gibney imagined it would.

Instead, Gibney found himself the proud owner of a partially completed film dedicated to propping up a disgraced professional athlete. A less ambitious director might have shelved the film forever, but Gibney was determined to finish it. Lance Armstrong lied to Gibney just like he'd lied to everyone else, and in The Armstrong Lie, Gibney makes him answer for it. Watching the film undergo a metamorphosis from a passion project into a quest to hold Armstrong accountable for his actions makes for a truly unique, ambitious and engaging take on the story that's totally deserving of our admiration.

Unlike its subject.

THE ARMSTRONG LIE, 2:10 and 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 4, 606 S. Fawcett Ave., Tacoma, $4.50-$9, 253.593.4474

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