Chris Bell grew up a middle child, stuck between two tough guy brothers bent on being the biggest, the strongest, and the fastest. All three siblings shared the dream of becoming body building celebrities, similar to cultural superheroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Hulk Hogan. But while two of the Bell boys turned to steroids to boost their floundering careers, Chris turned his camera on the phenomena of body and performance enhancement via some of the nation’s most controversial drugs. Bigger, Stronger, Faster* is not just a documentary; it’s a documentary on steroids.

It’s a tough task for a documentary filmmaker to turn the camera on himself; it’s even more difficult to effectively turn it on his family. But because Bell’s brothers, affectionately known as “Smelly” and “Mad Dog”, are both such thoughtful, intelligent, and even sensitive subjects, it’s hard to imagine the movie without them. The film sets off as the young men struggle to find solace in strength; it first chronicles their journeys from overweight, picked-on kids, to seven-hundred-pound bench-pressing powerhouses. Because the Bells are so engaging, they are the perfect springboard for examining a culture obsessed with being the toughest, the most powerful, and the most shredded.

It never occurred to me that making muscle was such a major method of finding fame in the 1980’s 1990’s hay day of professional wrestling. The dwindling dreams of Hollywood gym rats is a tough and troubling feature of Bell’s film; he successfully tours through the famous Gold’s Gym, shrine to Arnold Schwarzenegger, so that the audience might understand what being the best and the biggest means to some men. These guys even camp out in the gym’s parking lot so that they’re ready to work out during each day’s first waking hours. Most are in their fifties, still waiting to achieve glory, and perhaps justifiably convinced that steroids are now their only hope for finding super-human strength.

Bell is a fantastic interviewer; his sincere, introspective style lends itself beautifully to extracting the most profound and intimate insights from his subjects. Bell is both the concerned listener and the persistent Devil’s advocate at precisely the right moments; Bigger, Stronger, Faster* might be the only piece of documentary work which has ever portrayed both steroid users and protesters in equally authentic lights.

The film features a colorful, captivating cast of characters. There’s Gregg Valentino, the self proclaimed owner of the biggest biceps in America who won fame when his arms supposedly exploded years back from steroids and strain. Valentino stresses that “steroids are as American as apple pie” while politicians such as Senator Joe Biden proclaim that steroids are as anti-American as anything. There’s Don Hooton, who blames steroid withdrawal for the suicide death of his teenage son. Hooton staunchly refutes the director’s suggestion that the boy’s Lexapro medication might have driven him over the edge. Eventually, though Hooton proves his passion for his son, his condemnation of steroids in the face of much more lethal elements reveals his fight might not be founded in logic.

Both archival footage and sit down interviews recreate and extend the decades-old drama between Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis, the later having received the Olympic track and field title lost by the former after he tested positive for steroid use. Bell probes the fact that Carl Lewis has failed a good many drug tests himself; interviews with an Olympic Committee expert suggest that the controversial substances Lewis calls “herbs” and “cold medicines”, are actually illegal anabolic steroids.

Bell even takes the steroid situation out of the realm of sports; he interviews an AIDS patient who says his life is continuously saved by the steroids which restored and maintain his blood count. From there, the director delves into what qualifies steroid use as cheating and whether or not other forms of “enhancement”, such as Tiger Wood’s Lasik eye surgery and Floyd Landis’ altitude chamber, should be incriminated by the same set of criteria.

What surprised me about this film is what must have (somewhat) surprised its director. Chris Bell began his examination of steroids by describing his aversion to them. But by the end of the film, though he was still more than mildly apprehensive, Bell seemed to make some sort of peace with his brothers’, his culture’s need for strength, size, and speed. Before watching Bigger, Stronger, Faster*, I considered myself a purist, a complete critic of enhancement drugs of any kind. Though I certainly don’t consider myself desensitized, this film provided me with a profound understanding for the almost honorable heart and competitive spirit driving steroids users to be the best they can be. I was also alerted to the fact that the fight against steroids might not be as simple and as unadulterated as it seems. “Intellectual arguments don’t matter,” says Don Hooton about the cause of the death of his son. Why has society made steroids the scapegoat for much more serious problems? When the numbers are stacked, it seems steroids are not quite the devils they’ve been deemed to be. Bigger, Stronger, Faster* suggests steroids are not the problem; they’re just a side effect of being American.

Liz Licorish
LizFlix@ElitesTV.com