The streaming platforms you know and love - and probably some you’ve never heard of and don’t pay for (yet?) - are adding to their Sports documentary catalogs with new documentaries on topics that race from polarizing NASCAR drivers to bodybuilding twins who get swole™ and traffic drugs!
ROWDY | FREEVEE - Directors: J.J. Terry, Richard Valenzuela
Amazon’s dropping the green flag (<---ICYMI that’s a cool racing reference) on a NASCAR documentary that focuses on the sport of racing. Specifically star driver Kyle Busch.
Titled Rowdy, after Busch’s nickname and the energy drink moniker, it tells the story of what some call one of the greatest comebacks of all time in sports (though true OGs know the comeback King will always be Ben Hogan). Like Hogan, Busch possesses a dogged determination to win at everything, and that perseverance had to get in the driver’s seat (see what we did there?) after what could have been a near career ending wreck in 2015.
Think movies about racing are the pits? (OMG we can’t help ourselves) Check out the rest of what Freevee has to offer!
STAND | SHOWTIME- Directed by Joslyn Rose Lyons
Billed as a “raw and unflinching examination of the courageous life of basketball star and social justice activist Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf”, STAND tells the story how Abdul-Rauf, born Chris Jackson, had to surmount tremendous adversity to get to the NBA and how he discovered a deep calling when he converted to Islam. It was his choice to not stand for the national anthem, though, that changed his status from revered to reviled. Abdul-Rauf himself tells his own story in this doc and it’s a story of a man who kept the faith and paved the way for a social justice movement. Good stuff.
If you’re feeling too raw from the state of *gestures to literally everything in the world* to watch this documentary, go find a more lighthearted sports pic at Showtime Documentaries!
AMERICAN PAIN | CNN - Directed by Darren Foster
American Pain traces the rise and fall of twin bodybuilders from Florida who become the kingpins of the largest oxycodone trafficking network in US history. Drawing on hundreds of hours of wiretap recordings, undercover videos and exclusive interviews with key players and rivals in Florida's pill mill boom, the film captures in dramatic detail the greatest drug racket to hit the Sunshine State since the cocaine cowboys of the 1980s. The big difference: this time, the suppliers aren't some Colombian drug cartel; it's the US pharmaceutical industry pumping out billions of powerful and addictive pills, unleashing the worst drug epidemic in American history.
If documentaries about addicted bodybuilders aren’t your drug of choice, tap into what else CNN Films has on the menu!
THE PERFECT 10 | PRIME VIDEO - Directed by Steve Trout
THE PERFECT 10 is a documentary that brings together seven of the ten football legends that share rarified air: winning the Heisman Trophy and entering the Hall of Fame. The film focuses on these GOATs as they revisit memories and talk about the life journeys that resulted in this unique accomplishment they all have in common. For context: more men have walked on the moon! The film also shares the off-field personas of Marcus Allen, Tim Brown, Earl Campbell, Tony Dorsett, Barry Sanders, Roger Staubach and Charles Woodson - and includes intimate details of their past that more fully define them as people.
If football content has you feeling concussed, go check the doc roster over at Fox Sports Films for something else that might scratch that sports itch! (But you might want to get that checked)
