Thrilling documentary

Icarus is a Netflix streaming documentary that starts out small. The director has the idea of documenting how elite bicycle racers elude doping tests by doping himself and getting tested. This leads to Russian doping experts, which in turn stumbles into the Russian doping underground, which eventually breaks into the Russian doping scandal, and as the director gets involved with newspapers and FBI, his investigations lead directly to the ban on Russian athletes in the Olympics and an international diplomatic crisis. All the while the director is filming everyone, including the Russian whistleblower, who is put into the US federal witness protection program for fear of Russian assassination. It’s a mind-boggling Oscar-winning documentary that expands bigger and bigger as it proceeds. — KK