Icarus
Year: 2017
Rating: R
Length: 120 minutes / 2.00 hours
Some things in this world don’t really need an explanation. If you’ve been around long enough, you can be fairly certain some things are true without requiring evidence. After all, we can usually extrapolate a reason for something if we know how the systems around it work. Even if there are barriers to keep these things from happening, we always have a hunch they’re happening. For example, Icarus (2017) exposes the doping of Russian athletes for basically the entire time that Russian athletes have existed. This, of course, is not a surprise to anyone.
While we can certainly blame the Cold War for Russia’s obsession with winning at sports (and especially the Olympic Games), it is a little unsettling how far and how thoroughly the Russian government went to make sure their athletes were the best. The exposé Icarus provides is enthralling as it is revealed just how far up the oligarchy this conspiracy goes. Learning how they overcame the numerous methods in place to ensure their athletes weren’t doping is as astonishing as it is despicable. Again, I wasn’t surprised that Russia was doing this, but seeing the mounting evidence against them was hard to ignore.
My only qualm with this film was how the first act felt a little out of place. Sure, it was a lead-in to learning how to beat the anti-doping systems that Russia had perfected over decades of research. Still, I almost feel the movie would have been a little tighter if it focused solely on the scandalous revelations from Grigory Rodchenkov, the leader of a Russian anti-doping lab. The fact that the rest of the movie plays like a tight thriller as Grigory exposes the truth of Russia’s athletic lies made me almost completely forget how this film started.
An astonishing amount of evidence revealing Russia’s athletic doping, I give Icarus 3.5 stars out of 5.
1/2
