Can Lance Armstrong squirm? We don’t know because The Armstrong Lie doesn’t make him

Alex Gibney’s The Armstrong Lies is fascinating as far as it goes but it may not go as far as you would like, and may not ask the questions you would like. It’s a documentary portrait of the American cyclist Lance Armstrong: seven-time winner of the Tour de France, worldwide symbol of physical courage (having survived testicular cancer in his twenties), founder of the Livestrong Foundation, which has raised millions for cancer sufferers, and something else. It’ll come to me in a minute. Talk among yourselves. Oh, yes. Cheat. Also, liar. He lived a cheating lie, all day, every day, throughout his sporting career. He lived a cheating lie even as he is pulling on his socks or taking the rubbish out. But Gibney never gets to the heart of him. It is fully possible there is no heart to get to — Armstrong is a cold-blooded customer — but I wanted to see him trying. So, in this way, The Armstrong Lie huffs and puffs and pedals like mad but never quite makes it over the finish line.

Interestingly, yet contaminatingly, as Gibney never entirely foregoes his admiring tone, this is not the film he originally set out to make. He set out to make a straightforward, ‘positive’ comeback movie following Armstrong’s attempt to win the Tour de France in 2009. (Having retired in 2005 after his seven consecutive wins, Armstrong could not keep away.) Gibney had the film done and dusted when Armstrong was suddenly forced, after years of furious denials, to come clean about his doping habits, and confessed all to Oprah, as you would. (Confessing all to Oprah is probably the next best thing to papal absolution. One day, I would like to confess all to Oprah.)