Sports and politics collide in two shrewd Olympic year tie-ins. By TIM WONG.

LESS OF AN essay on steroid abuse than an airing of America’s dirty linen, Bigger, Stronger, Faster* is far too overreaching to claim itself as a definitive or even cogent documentary on the subject of performance enhancing drugs, regularly tying itself in knots through sheer weight of exposition. Nevertheless, its director, Chris Bell, manages to draw some eye-popping juxtapositions, making a brilliant connection in his opening salvo between the duplicity of anabolic steroid use, and that most dubious, scripted of competitive sports, pro wrestling (by way of his childhood hero, Hulk Hogan, who proceeds to DDT the very un-American ‘Iron Sheik’ into the mat).

The game is indeed rigged according to Bell, who thrusts baseball, athletics, professional lifting, and even classical recitalists into the mix. Such shorthand case studies, however, only serve to crowd an already unfocused debate, with the film poised on a series of for-and-against arguments that ultimately cancel each other out. Yet as a morality play, this one-man odyssey is an engaging three-act; Bell’s internal conflict a monologue central to the documentary’s lack of surety. The plucky filmmaker struggles, in particular, to reconcile his stance as an anti-drug athlete with his adoration for Arnold Schwarzenegger – the Hollywood star a self-confessed doper in his Pumping Iron heydays. Having planted compelling seeds of doubt – that everyone is doing it, that Arnie became somebody because of it, that there can’t be anything wrong with it – Bell seemingly drops the ball, relinquishing his vote to the Republican incumbent in 2006, and posing in a muscular fist clench with the Governator not long after. If Bell lacks conviction though, he’s all the more endearing for it.

Looking at The King of Kong, another shrewd Olympics year tie-in, the lines between good and evil are evidently more clear-cut: there’s greasy Billy Mitchell, video game poster boy and restaurant profiteer, whose long-standing record in arcade bastion Donkey Kong is threatened by family man Steve Wiebe, a disarming Middle American with a point to prove. Tackling Mitchell’s benchmark from the garage of his suburban home, it quickly becomes apparent that Wiebe possesses the aptitude of a quantum physicist or latent autistic, mastering the coin-op classic with supreme pattern recognition and hand-eye coordination to post a new high score. What follows is a sports-political fracas, with the self-proclaimed governing body, Twin Galaxies, presiding over allegations of a rigged motherboard. With his record invalidated, Wiebe settles the score by clocking the game in public, only for his accomplishment to be upstaged by Mitchell’s underhanded tactics. Sure enough, the documentary manipulates its footage to exaggerate the rivalry, and in particular, accentuate Mitchell’s standoffish behavior and embarrassing performance anxiety, yet in the finest sporting tradition, compels you to root for the underdog cliché – a nothing if not entertaining conceit. Essentially a vintage eighties parable – not of tournament karate or competitive arm wrestling, but anachronistic video gaming – it’s little wonder anthems ‘Eye of the Tiger’ and Joe Esposito’s underrated ‘You’re the Best’ reverberate on the soundtrack. In spirit, even Mitchell enlists his own juvenile sidekick, a nebbish parasite who, short of heckling “Get him in a body bag!”, does his best to put Wiebe off his stride.

See also:
» Side Effects: Gonzo—The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson; Bigger, Stronger, Faster*
» Nice Guys Finish Fast: The King of Kong