James “Whitey” Bulger is a very, very bad man; even with a title like Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger, this documentary doesn’t intend to debate whether or not Bulger is guilty of the various crimes he’s been accused of throughout the last few decades. No, director Joe Berlinger doesn’t intend to explore a potential miscarriage of justice regarding Bulger’s career of crime. Instead, he asks this question: “If Whitey Bulger was such a terrible criminal, and wasn’t exactly concerning himself with hiding his misdeeds, how did it take the U.S. government until 2011 to capture him?” While the case against the government is fairly damning, it’s difficult to reconcile a movie that argues, somewhat, in favor of Bulger.

Berlinger’s film partly tells the story of Bulger’s rise to power after a lengthy stint in prison up until the 1970s, concurrent with the story of Bulger’s trial from late last year. From the beginning, the documentary has a tenuous balance to strike: presenting Bulger’s truly heinous crimes and attempting to sidestep them in place of focusing on the surprisingly, outrageously corrupt government that let him run rampant in Boston from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. While Berlinger was able to get interviews with both the Bulger defense and the Assistant U.S. Attorneys prosecuting the criminal, it’s clear early on that the film’s siding, if just slightly, with the defense. (All of the interviews with the AUSAs are standard-issue talking-heads, whereas we see the defense team convening in their offices, sometimes talking with the never-seen Bulger on the phone.) So we not only find out about Bulger’s past, from the perspective of the various journalists, ex-cons, litigators, and more, but we find out that Bulger denies one of the most famous elements to his legacy: that he was a notorious informant for the FBI for years.

That denial, in effect, becomes the linchpin of the film (and, from its point of view, the entire case). Bulger’s defense chooses not to argue that he’s innocent of murder or drug trafficking or the like; they suggest that the FBI perpetuated a lie about him being a rat, which then allowed him to act with impunity for decades. Many of the witnesses, who are related to the victims of Bulger’s crimes, argue that the government’s just as bad as Bulger, that they are equally complicit. Bulger, accused of 33 different crimes, chooses to make his defense about how he was a mad dog let off the leash; the true criminal was the entity that let him roam free, he’d say. Though that may be true–the evidence stacked against the government throughout the film is difficult to deny, but of course the AUSAs try to do so–Whitey Bulger’s crimes are too great to ignore. This film doesn’t pooh-pooh his murderous streak, but the victims’ family members are closer to a Greek chorus in the background than front and center.

What’s more, by focusing so much on the FBI’s morally bankrupt core from the past, Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger ends up turning Whitey Bulger into a supporting character in his own life. This is, partly, due to the fact that Bulger’s never seen as an old man, just in archival footage and via those speakerphone calls with his defense lawyers. Joe Berlinger’s laser-like focus on trying to get the government to account for its crimes throughout the years is noble, but feels like it should be the subject of another film. Some of the most truly disturbing moments in this doc, those where Bulger’s potential evil rears its ugly head again, are blips that barely make an impact. For example, a man who was extorted by Bulger crows at the beginning that he can’t wait to face this criminal in court; halfway through the film, it’s shockingly revealed that he’s died under mysterious circumstances. Did Bulger or one of his cronies bump off a witness? Why knock off this guy? The answer–held until the end credits–is maddeningly vague and unexplored, so much so that it’s perplexing to include it in the film at all. In a way, that side track speaks to the film’s overall problem; it’s as if Joe Berlinger was sidetracked from delving into Whitey Bulger’s crimes for a greater goal, offering up only a distracted and stretched-thin story in its place.

Grade: C