This had a large part in Russian athletes’ success in numerous athletic competitions, including the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Rodchenkov, under the supervision of the KGB - or the Russian Committee for State Security - was instructed to swap Russian athletes’ steroid-tainted urine with clean samples to avoid detection on many different occasions. With a thick Russian accent, a pair of large glasses and an occasionally juvenile sense of humor, Rodchenkov proves a fascinating subject for the film’s second half, as Fogel’s personal story eventually fades to the background. Watching the film is akin to watching a tense spy film, except everything viewers watch on-screen is happening in real-life. While some viewers might associate the documentary genre with stale shots of people talking directly to the camera and the overused Ken Burns filming effects, in which the camera slowly zooms and pans over photographs, “Icarus” transcends viewers’ expectations.
“Icarus” begins as an entertaining documentary and ends as a pulse-pounding real-life thriller, as Fogel learns of a Russian state-sponsored Olympic doping program. This poses the question - why would the head of an anti-doping administration help Fogel cheat the system? Through a peculiar chain of events, Fogel gets in contact with Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of a WADA-supported laboratory, to oversee Fogel’s doping experiment.
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If Fogel succeeds in his experiment, he could bring attention to the ease at which athletes can cheat in professional sports competitions. In the years following Lance Armstrong’s admittance of using performance-enhancing drugs, first-time director Bryan Fogel attempts to prove he can get away with doping without detection by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Compelling, surprising and downright shocking, director Bryan Fogel’s Netflix-exclusive documentary “Icarus” is essential viewing for anyone interested in the world of competitive sports, especially the ongoing Winter Olympics in South Korea.
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