This documentary joins a very select club of riveting, often amusing, and somewhat bizarre documentaries that make must-see viewing (the other two are the Netflix Fyre Island documentary and Tiger King). But this one has an extra edge as the other two’s fascination was almost exclusively from the story that they told and the characters -all of whom, as here, seem to have a stunning lack of self-awareness - here there is an element of cinematic style that is particularly bizarre and yet, after some reflection, also wonderfully appropriate.
The story is that of a (the?) major baseball drugs/steroids scandal of a few years ago that brought down many very eminent players, including A-Rod (or A-Roid as he became known) and centres on a ‘doctor’ Tony Bosch who qualified at the top-ranking Belize university The Central America Health Sciences university with its 3.5 years medical course and became in involved in supplying drugs to major league baseball players - and would-be players at High school (which was essentially what finally brought him down and into jail for a (short) spell) This side, only briefly mentioned, recalled the recent university admissions scandal with parents doing anything to give their child the ‘skills’ needed to get into the top leagues.
The people he surrounded himself with with the most dodgy, amateurish and often, dangerous, group of characters you could hope/be unfortunate enough to meet outside of a Martin Scorsese movie. He used his father, a genuine retired doctor as a figurehead for his ‘clinics’…
But from a cinematic point of view, the really fun idea was using child actors, mining in sync with interviews given with all major characters. This absurd idea actually put the whole story, in one way, on just the right level - and as things began to unravel for Bosch, so the appearance of the child actor became more distraught with fake stubble and mad hair. It was a lovely idea and it worked so well.
I could go on for ages with details about magnificent scenes, stunningly awkward interviews etc etc but its much better to just see the film. Apparently the director has also made one called Cocaine Cowboys, set in 80’s Miami which I must now seek out as I suspect it has the same degree of style…