{"id":2696,"date":"2021-06-29T15:00:55","date_gmt":"2021-06-29T21:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=2696"},"modified":"2021-06-02T20:56:51","modified_gmt":"2021-06-03T02:56:51","slug":"movie-icarus-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2021\/06\/29\/movie-icarus-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"MOVIE: Icarus (2017)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft \" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/3\/3a\/Icarus_%282017_film%29.png\" alt=\"Icarus\" width=\"202\" height=\"299\">Icarus<br>\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2017<br>\nRating: R<br>\nLength: 120 minutes \/ 2.00 hours<\/p>\n<p>Some things in this world don&#8217;t really need an explanation. If you&#8217;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&#8217;re happening. For example, <em>Icarus<\/em> (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.<\/p>\n<p>While we can certainly blame the Cold War for Russia&#8217;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 expos\u00e9 <em>Icarus<\/em> 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&#8217;t doping is as astonishing as it is despicable. Again, I wasn&#8217;t surprised that Russia was doing this, but seeing the mounting evidence against them was hard to ignore.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s athletic lies made me almost completely forget how this film started.<\/p>\n<p>An astonishing amount of evidence revealing Russia&#8217;s athletic doping, I give <em>Icarus<\/em> 3.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\">&nbsp;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\">&nbsp;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\">&nbsp;1\/2<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/bmw-the-critic\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"820\" height=\"312\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/BMW-the-Critic.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1821\" srcset=\"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/BMW-the-Critic.jpg 820w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/BMW-the-Critic-300x114.jpg 300w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/BMW-the-Critic-768x292.jpg 768w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/BMW-the-Critic-640x244.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Icarus Year: 2017 Rating: R Length: 120 minutes \/ 2.00 hours Some things in this world don&#8217;t really need an explanation. If you&#8217;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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,2740,2],"tags":[349,2747,2742,1588,2746,731,2741,13,2280,2743,2745,2744],"class_list":["post-2696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-5-stars","category-documentary","category-movie","tag-349","tag-anti-doping","tag-athlete","tag-documentary","tag-doping","tag-drugs","tag-icarus","tag-movie","tag-netflix","tag-olympics","tag-performance-enhancing-drugs","tag-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2696"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2702,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696\/revisions\/2702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}