Mike Wallace, as seen in Mike Wallace Is Here (Magnolia Pictures)

CBS just renewed 60 Minutes for its 52nd season, a series the broadcast network touts as “the #1 primetime news program for more than five decades.” Mike Wallace was a founding star in 1968 on the self-described “magazine for television” and reigned for 40 years. This career biography uses exclusively archival footage, including outtakes, to explain how he got there, while superficially revealing how he stayed on top and the impact of his aggressive tactics on television journalism.

Director Avi Belkin’s debut English-language feature documentary opens with its most intriguing setup and then takes a while to reach that insight again. Wallace, near the sunset of his career, interviews Bill O’Reilly at the height of his dominance at Fox News, the most watched cable news network. Wallace proffers to O’Reilly: “People told me, bring him down!” O’Reilly chortles back, “You’re a dinosaur.”

After basic biographical information is introduced—he was born in 1918 in Brookline, Massachusetts—Wallace describes how self-conscious he was of his acne. He appreciated that “On radio, I could hide behind the microphone,” and he discovered his voice. Television in the early 1950s was just an experiment, and he was a jack-of-all-trades, even trying acting and hosting game shows, until in 1956 he landed the opportunity to host Night Beat, a half-hour show at a New York City station.

In just months it went national and became The Mike Wallace Interview. It featured, over 73 episodes, a new approach his colleague Morley Safer credits to him, “Your invention of the tough question.” As seen in kinescope clips, Wallace challenges a Ku Klux Klan leader in full regalia and calls Drew Pearson, a prominent Washington columnist, a liar. Wallace proudly declares that previously on TV, “No one confronted anybody. But I said, let’s ask questions that were never asked before.” His aggressive persona became comic fodder for TV satire by Jack Benny and Carl Reiner.

There’s a touching lost years interregnum when he was a pitchman on commercials and otherwise off the air. But the death of his 20-year-old son, Peter, in 1962 drove him to become serious about TV journalism. His new goal was to follow in the legendary footsteps of Edward R. Murrow at CBS, despite the “intellectuals,” at what was then known as the Tiffany Network, who looked down at him as “an upstart.” He anchored episodes of CBS Reports (including the now notorious “The Homosexual”) and brags that Nixon so liked his 1968 political convention coverage that he was asked to become his presidential press secretary.

Then producer Don Hewitt came to him with the idea of hosting a new television magazine program. Wallace would go on to lead more than 1,000 stories for 60 Minutes. Clips from those interviews fill most of the film. Surprisingly, considering that Belkin had unlimited access to the CBS News archives, most excerpts seem to capture Wallace using his tough guy approach with entertainment figures, such as Bette Davis, Barbra Streisand, and Barbara Walters, while a few world leaders’ images go by, indicating that he became the aggressive inquisitor opposite any subject. The film’s title reflects those subjects’ nervous reaction to him coming with a cameraman.

A montage of copycat television programs that have come and gone, as well as local reporters imitating Wallace’s style, suggest his superficial influence. The 1996 episode with biochemist Jeffrey Wigand on the tobacco industry’s manipulation of nicotine is used as the prime example of how 60 Minutes began to feature more whistleblowers. (CBS last year developed something of an offshoot, a new true crime series, Whistleblower.) The documentary doesn’t mention that the story around this episode was so dramatic that Michael Mann turned it into The Insider (1999), where Christopher Plummer played Wallace. Hollywood highlighted what was important behind the screens, with Al Pacino playing producer Lowell Bergman.

As Wallace ages on camera, such as when he makes excuses about being depressed and then hard of hearing, there are some hints that 60 Minutes did not reflect the work of Wallace and the other on-screen reporters but was really the investigative producers’ show. The documentary doesn’t further explore how the producer develops the facts and information, while the tough appearing interrogator mostly reads the scripted questions. The insecurity that Wallace felt over his lack of a journalism background comes across as deserved.

In a glaring lost opportunity, there is no ironic consideration that Wallace’s younger son Chris has been on Fox News since 2003, where he has gone from loyal Roger Ailes mouthpiece (as seen on the Showtime miniseries The Loudest Voice) to imitator of his father’s style when interviewing representatives of the Trump administration. According to the Nielsen ratings, the largest audience for TV news programs skewers older, including 60 Minutes. These viewers will find only a little in this film that’s revealing or surprising.