But it's IMAX, it's bike racing, it's the Tour de France, and it's 2003.
So go see it anyway.
With all that going for it, it almost seems like the filmmakers
struggled to make the most boring film possible. As most of us know, it
was scripted and filmed to feature Tyler Hamilton, who crashed at the
end of stage one, broke his collarbone, continued the race, even
impressively won a stage, and finished fourth overall. After Tyler got
dumped for (alleged) doping in 2004, they hacked and slashed the footage
to effectively cut him out. We see a couple shots clearly featuring
Tyler, but never hear his name. He's listed in the "featured riders"
credits.
Instead, we get... Jimmy Caspar and Baden Cooke. Woo-hoo! Okay, Caspar
earned a role, having sprained his neck in the same crash and continuing
into the Alps while wearing a neck brace. Cooke wrestled the green
jersey from Robbie McEwen, so it was worth covering him as well.
But these guys are sprinters who normally show up only in the last
minute of the flat stages. Clearly, the big IMAX camera wasn't pointed
at them for very long. We see Caspar on his bike for about 15 seconds
once the road goes uphill. Francais de Jeux riders (apparently) did some
post-race filming to help complete the footage and provide back story.
All the jaw-dropping drama of that year's TdF is depicted in OLN
footage. LANCE is mentioned prominently but mainly as the amazing guy
who owned the Tour. We see him on Luz Ardiden, but Beloki's crash and
Armstrong's cyclo-cross escapade on the road to Gap is given a complete
miss.
There's too much computer animation and not enough really cool IMAX race
coverage. Ample amounts of the former to tell the film's intended story
of how the brain of a human under stress works, too little of the latter
depicting the truly impressive speeds the pros ride at. What there is of
that IS cool, and I wonder how much of the non-cycling audience
understands the insane power required to go as fast as the pros do on
the flat or uphill.
I think the producers should've just said "go to hell" to WADA (World
Anti-Doping Agency), and ran with the original Tyler-centered story.
They could've used their original footage and Tyler's gut-check
performance in that race fed right into the film's original plot. They
could've held on a long prominent disclaimer at the end of the film
spilling the beans on Tyler's doping problems.
--
Lynn Wallace http://www.xmission.com/~lawall
I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the
trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view,
the most insidious of traitors."
George H.W. Bush, April 16, 1999,