Review by Stephen Tronicek
THE PROGRAM almost gives the impression of a biker riding quickly down a hill, and then running him/herself into a wall. The cyclist can go quickly. He/she can burst forward with such a thrilling momentum that it can’t be conceived. That might be entertaining, but they still hit the wall.
That thrilling momentum is the best thing that THE PROGRAM has going for it (besides a performance by Ben Foster too researched and nuanced for the film he’s in). This is the type of pacing that fits comedies, and action films better, but it’s interesting to see how much director Stephen Frears (The Queen) gets away with by keeping the film going quickly. He’s able to cover the entirety of Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France career, and David Walsh’s investigations into the cyclist into a tight one hundred and five minutes. This is the momentum pushing the film along, and the film flies like Armstrong continues to tell his team to do. The problem with going this way is that something has to be trimmed. One or two parts of the story have to be thinned to allow for it to be fully told. The Program opts to lessen too many of the interesting parts.
The first part of the film is excellent because it fits its own pace. Sure, it probably could have used a slower more spaced out structure, but in the context of what part of the story needs to be covered it works. Foster is playing Armstrong with an unprecedented amount of charm through this section, and this initial charm actually allows there to always be a sense of doubt even as we watch Armstrong go through a slew of performance enhancing drugs. This combined with a potently over the top performance by Guillaume Canet as Armstrong’s trainer/dope provider Michele Ferrari makes for the first 45 minutes of the film to be intoxicating.
Then after that the film takes a turn, and it’s goal is to lower out opinion of the man that we’ve rooted for, mostly (Foster might be a bit too charming) succeeding. The problem is that it does this by introducing another character for Armstrong to kick around. This person starts off only as Chris O’Dowd playing David Walsh, the reporter that took Armstrong down. The “taking down another person” structure does give the film a lot of focus initially, but soon Jesse Plemons enters the picture as Floyd Landis. Landis was a rider on Armstrong’s Tour de France team, and at least according to the film was basically left out in the cold eventually. Plemons offers a fine performance, but the introduction of his character thins the entire “fall” of the “fall from grace” that Armstrong has. It is important that the film tell the full arch of the story, but it almost seems by the ending it can’t manage to tell the full story. The pacing keeps the film going, but eventually the shallowness leads it right into the wall.
That said, the film does keep everything going long enough to seem consistently good. Some will certainly write off the trimmed running time, and unsolid structure, but to those who get into the story and the charisma that Foster brings to Armstrong the film will prove enough. THE PROGRAM crashes, but it stays upbeat for long enough.
Momentum Pictures will release THE PROGRAM in select theaters and on VOD on March 18th.
THE PROGRAM will be available exclusively on DIRECTV before it hits theaters.
Check out the trailer for THE PROGRAM:
