Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.

I'm assuming that quite a few of you were fans of the big action movies of the '80s and early '90s. You know the ones I mean. They usually starred Arnold or Sly and featured oil-up muscles of enormous size and proportion. Or perhaps you liked professional wrestling as a youngster. Or baseball. Or football. Maybe the feats of bodybuilders served as an inspiration to you. All of these scenarios factored into the life of young Christopher Bell, a smallish boy who grew up (along with his two brothers) to be muscle men of some sort. One brother was a champion weightlifter; the other, a would-be wrestler. Chris was also a major contender in the weightlifting game. They grew up in a good home, went to church three times a week, and all three took steroids at some point in their lives. Two of them still do.

In many ways, the documentary BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER, directed by Bell, defies every expectation I had of it. It chronicles the history and extent of steroid culture in America and the world (for many of us, the first time we saw steroids was when that dirty Russian Drago was injected with the stuff in ROCKY IV). But it does much more than that. It shows us an environment of hypocrisy that exists around performance enhancing drugs, how politicians have used it as a political tool because of high-profile users getting caught "cheating" at sports by using the drugs, and how the subject of steroids in his own family is tolerated even though it goes against everything he and his brothers were raised to believe. Bell pulls no punches, especially when it comes to Arnold Schwartzenegger, an admitted steroid user during his Mr. Universe days and early film career, who has since come out against its use. Bell isn't afraid to name names like Stallone, Hulk Hogan, runner Ben Johnson, Barry Bonds and countless lesser-known athletes.

Bell wisely looks at the mixed messages that are sent to high school students, some of whom use some form of enhancement drugs for everything from being better at sports to better concentration to eliminating performance anxiety. The director traces a lot of what drives Americans to take any kind of legal or illegal enhancement drugs to our nation's desire to win by any means. And he examines his own personal feelings about discovering that his film and sports heroes were breaking rules that he held sacred. Bell is a terrific narrator, and he has a real knack for mixing humor and solid research in his movie. I particularly enjoyed him hiring immigrant workers to help his buddies manufacture fake mass-building pills out of rice powder and charging astronomical amounts of money for a jar of the stuff.

BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER is far from a condemnation of steroid use. I think Bell's mission is to further the debate rather than take a stance on the issue. In fact, if the film accomplished anything in my mind it's that steroid use has been demonized a great deal in recent years. And while there clearly can be terrible side effects, they aren't any more severe or likely that for people who drink too much, smoke too much, or take all manner of legal over-the-counter drugs. The movie works best when Bell brings the issue back home to his family. In this close-knit family where secrets simply don't exist, Bell's brothers keep their steroid use a secret from mom. She suspects something is up, and even that amount of knowledge seems to kill her a little. But the scene in which Bell comes face to face with Gov. Schwartzenegger to really grill him about the mixed messages he sends about steroids is worth the price of admission.

Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com