History Film / Icarus

It begins with Bryan Fogel, an amateur cyclist, seeking to document the uselessness of drug tests in sports as administrated by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and other agencies.
Fogel's idea is to himself go through a standard PED ("performance-enhancing drug") doping cycle, then document how he beat drug tests while competing. Fogel needs an expert to help him set up and administer his program of steroid use, so he contacts Don Catlin, the founder of the UCLA Olympics Lab. Catlin doesn't wish to get involved so he introduces Fogel to Grigori Rodchenkov, the director of Russia's Olympic drug-testing laboratory.

Fogel's idea is to himself go through a standard PED ("performance-enhancing drug") doping cycle, then document how he beat drug tests while competing. Fogel needs an expert to help him set up and administer his program of steroid use. Fogel contacts Don Catlin, the founder of the UCLA Olympics Lab, who doesn't wish to get involved but refers Fogel to Grigori Rodchenkov, the director of Russia's Olympic drug-testing laboratory.

Fogel's idea is to himself go through a standard PED ("performance-enhancing drug") doping cycle, then document how he beat drug tests while competing. Fogel needs an expert to help him set up and administer his program of steroid use. After eventually being rebuffed by the first scientist he approaches, Fogel makes contact with Grigori Rodchenkov, director of Russia's drug-testing laboratory.

* SelfExperimentation: Bryan Fogel seeks to document how steroids enhance performance by going on a PED regimen. Ironically this fails as Fogel does worse on his second time in the mountain biking race, after he doped up.

** Very popular Soviet-era cartoon ''Animation/NuPogodi'' is shown briefly during a montage dramatizing Rodchenkov's institutionalization.

* TheKenBurnsEffect: Used very sparingly with most of the stills, but one can often see some very slight zooming. Then there's a very quick and dramatic zoom in on a picture of Putin during a sequence that recounts the chain-of-command in the Russian government which organized the steroid plot.
* MalignantPlotTumor: Initially, Dr. Rodchenkov seems to be a supporting character in Fogel's expose-bad-drug-tests movie, and the comments about Russian doping are background detail. Then, after the Russian doping scandal bursts, Rodchenkov and his story take over the film.

Fogel's idea is to himself go through a standard PED ("performance-enhancing drug") doping cycle, then document how he beat drug tests while competing. Fogel needs an expert to help him set up and administer his program of steroid use. After eventually being rebuffed by the first scientist he approaches, Fogel makes contact with Grigori Rodchenkov, director of Russia's drug-testing laboratory.

While Rodchenkov is in the process of helping Fogel with his PED program, German television breaks an explosive report of an extensive, state-sanctioned program in Russia designed to help the entire Russian Olympic team take [=PEDs=] and still pass drug tests. Rodchenkov is summarily fired by the government that had been giving him marching orders. Fearing arrest, he flees to the United States. Bryan Fogel's original "fool drug tests" scheme is forgotten as the film centers on the explosive scandal that implicates the Russian government all the way up to UsefulNotes/VladimirPutin himself.

* AllForNothing: Rodchenkov is in witness protection in the United States, separated from his family, who themselves are being closely watched by the Russian government. He has no job. His family's assets are frozen. And the Russians get to compete in the 2016 Summer Games anyway. (After this film was made the Russians were banned from competing in the 2018 Winter Olympics, but that was a slap-on-the-wrist punishment as the athletes were still allowed to compete, just not under the Russian flag.)
* CallBack: Thomas Bach, president of the IOC, is shown giving an impassioned speech about the purity of sport and how athletes should play clean. The same clip is shown again in a far more bitter light near the end, right after Bach has given the Russians a free pass into the 2016 Summer Olympics despite the WADA recommendation that they should all be banned.

** Rodchenkov says that his favorite book is ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'' and he is shown reading it. Mention is made of the three stages of Winston Smith's re-education, the third, "Acceptance", coming at the end of the movie after the pious talk of the IOC is shown to be hypocrisy and the Russians get to participate despite the crimes that Rodchenkov revealed.