Who payed the critics

The Age of Commercialism

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

I read through some reviews before watching this film and throughout the film I couldn't help think that the reviewers were wrong. The crux of the point was more about spectators and the heroes that make them feel something amazing... to spite the fact that its sports. It's not some awe-inspiring feed the world campaign, its just a game. And the 'irrational' excitement from onlookers is so glaringly obvious by the use of a simple freeze frame - The moment his brother lifted the weight and his family jumped in excitement. The film wasn't intended as either a pro or anti steroid film. It merely presents some information about steroids and the world it plays out in all the while showcasing the fact that we, as a spectator, actually want to see something amazing and when we see that amazing thing, at that moment, it doesn't matter how it was achieved, at that very moment. And what can be taken away from the documentary: blaming the athlete for cheating is no different from blaming the spectator for being too excited. This steroid culture is fed by the spectator culture.

I started training at 13 in my basement has many of you i am sure, then moved on to the real thing at 16 in a real gym, where i was exposed to steroid use and abuse for many years.I was very impressed by the steroid bodies that i saw, and it was always a chock to me when i saw one of theses guys go off them, and become all normal again. I was also very afraid when i learned that the only way to administrate steroid with the least side effect was with a needle into the buttock. I was scared of needles.I was able to build my body naturally from a very skinny 138 pounds to 210 pounds without the use of steroids.When i turned 28 years old i had some saved money and decided that it might be time to try steroids once sense for all. I started a basic mass cycle deca durabolin, testosterone . The cycle lasted 8 weeks, i had cut down to 174 pounds at that time doing lots of boxing etc.I was quite amazed that at the end on my cycle i had ballooned up to 212 pounds, and i look a lot like i used to before, chubby not cut up like the pros, i had gained a lot of fat too, maybe i should have used an AI.This was my only steroid cycle i did. I was introduce to steroids once more at 39 years of age, but this time it was not to gain muscles nor loose weight, but to fix an injury and chronic pains that have lasted for more then 10 years.I started a treatment called prolotherapy where we used a water based testosterone suspension, some growth hormones, dextrose and Novocaine vitamin B and b12 injected into the laxer ligament and that worked wonders to fix me.Last night i got to see bigger stronger faster for the first time and enjoyed it a lot giving it a 10 rating because everything that is in there is the truth but this phenom is not only in America but in Canada too.I was glad that they showed not everyone using steroids will get ripped, some will retain fat has well. Also lots of death are not associated with steroid usage but with narcotics, depression pills and more, its the whole combination of them.I am now 40 years old back in training, i train for fun, i did pro wrestling when i was younger but its not longer one of my dreams, i knew when i got into this it was only for fun and never had any ambition to reach the WWE.I have been using growth hormone 1IU per day for 6 weeks now since this hormone start to decline at 25, and very low dose of testosterone i have a prescription for both and am check by a medical doctor. I feel that there should be more HRT out there hormonal therapy for us older men, because i feel a lot better, i sleep better, my body recuperates faster and i feel like i was 18 again.The movie said it best, Arnold, Hogan and Stallone did what they had to do to make it big, most of the people are uneducated about steroids, and they will speak false information about them and the lie goes on.WWE has the no drug policy apparently Randy Orton has been cough using steroids wish is a oral version of testosterone, i was very surprised that they actually did something about it but there is a lot more ground to cover because in pro wrestling everyone is using steroids, same has in MMA' but only the smart ones never get cough.

I am a basketball player of athletic built (work outs in the gym for 2 years now) and I personally am against the use of performance enhancing drugs or anabolic steroids (in sports).I was pretty mixed up after finishing this movie because I was never really sure if it was deliberate to weaken both the shown pro and anti steroid arguments, or if the movie simply sucks. Third possibility, the director and writers give an insight of how weird the mind processing of a (ex-)steroid user is.The reason why I ask myself this is because never ever a clear position on steroids in sports or in general seems to be taken and every time we have a point we are quickly served a counter argument.So now what? Let everybody do what he thinks is right? Can we blame America's competitive society for the popularity of steroids among gym rats? Seriously? On the pro-steroid side, we are presented with a lot of (mislead but also some successful) steroid takers who all seem like they don't get their mindset right, but on the anti-steroid side we have a politician heavily involved in the fight of steroids who has no clue what he's talking about.Does this mean that both sides are lead by unknowing amateurs that APPEAR to be great (bulky on one side, politician on the other) but that in REALITY they both pretty much lost track of who they are and what they initially wanted to achieve? Maybe so, that's at least what I thought, which would make the director great.Why else would he let steroid users say that since everybody takes 'em, they want to they 'em too, to stay competitive. Are we to choose a position on that? Is the movie provoking us to decide first for ourselves whether the use of steroids is bad and then for others? After all, many points in the movie go that direction to let everybody decide for himself what he thinks about steroids.For instance, we have the director explain to us that steroids are banned, illegal, ill received but that everybody condemning it did either take them (Governor Schwarzenegger) or support their use (in Sports, like ex-President G.W. Bush).To prove a point, he creates his own supplement, deliberately showing off that most of the stuff must be total sh**. Same thing with the photo-shopping of ads.The main supporters are supposed to be the fans that love and want more performance from their favorite athletes. So some are accused to play blind and others want it to be in order to ignore that, while we officially don't like cheating in sports, we, secretly, want it.Is the use of steroids then simply the result of what happens if your inner dirt bag takes over? Then that is does not pay off, because 99.99% of the steroid addicted gym rats achieve NOTHING in life but side effects? Talking about side effects, Mikes wife claims to not witness any on her husband, but she could by lying.Just as Barry Bonds says "You all lied". We all somewhere did. Maybe we should clean our closets first but truth be told, the no closet will ever get cleaned, they will all get dirtier.So here we are: steroids are bad, they are cheats, but then again they do not replace talent, there are other more dangerous drugs, then some side effects are reversible, some are not (those remain of course unmentioned in this movie) etc. etc, We could go on with that mindset and go nowhere, but I dare to find one point in this whole movie: Everybody has dirt on his hands but prefers to wash someone else's first while hiding theirs behind their back.There is also a letdown in this movie. That there IS a way to look like your role model or to at least feel to have achieved something great like your sports role model: work hard and earn it with honest effort. Unlike Johnson's stripped gold medal, that hard earned silver medal makes you an honest smiler.And happy with no negative side effects.

This is an honest, entertaining, and informative documentary. The man who is making this documentary about steroid use isn't someone just talking about it. You can tell he is emotionally involved in this. This is due to both his brothers taking steroids. That is a big part of the documentary. He isn't a guy interviewing someone he doesn't even know. He is talking to his brothers, and that makes this documentary much more than a documentary. It is also very entertaining. Documentaries are not made to be entertaining. They are made to be informative, but this documentary manages to keep you entertained as well as informed. That leads us to the information. They give solid facts in this movie. This does really show how publicity for steroids as gone overboard. People all the time say that steroids kill thousands of people, but this shows a solid number of 3 people confirmed dead from steroids a year. This really is one of the best documentaries I've ever watched. It is very underrated.4 stars out of 4