Docs like Jed Rothstein's excellent The China Hustle present us with such frequent occasions for outrage that, in the interest of fairness, it's time for a few top documentarians to assemble a five-minute disclaimer to run in front of each new exposé.

Jed Rothstein’s wildly entertaining documentary The China Hustle blows the lid off another multibillion-dollar heist built on complex financial instruments and a whole lot of smoke and mirrors.

A brisk, entertaining documentary that shows how the world of investment works.

At a time when financial regulations have been gutted, stock market indexes reel, and trade wars threaten, Jed Rothstein’s slick and revealing documentary The China Hustle should only add to the anxiety and gloom.

[An] accessible, persuasive, often amusing look at how investments in dubious Chinese companies gave way to crisis-level losses for average American stockholders in the wake of the 2008 financial disaster — and beyond — and made some U.S. bankers and lawyers and Chinese executives a bundle.

In horror movies, monsters often lose their power to terrify once they come fully into the frame. But as Rothstein reveals the full shape and size of an ogre that has slipped into our financial markets, just try to calm your growing dread.

The China Hustle is not interested in offering a crumb of hope, thereby enabling the frustration it will inevitably arouse in viewers to dissolve into apathy once the credits roll.

Rothstein’s film, for the most part, is more well-reported exposé than it is cliché-driven agitprop, a film that blows the whistle on ongoing financial crimes.

It’s a mildly engrossing if wonky exercise in what could be called a kind of selfish activism.

In the case of The China Hustle, a documentary may simply be the wrong delivery mechanism for a byzantine exposé that cries out for detailed news reporting.