Wouldn’t it be timely for a documentary to closely investigate the ramifications of the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, which lifted restrictions on political spending by corporations and unions? Citizen Koch announces that goal, with an angry flourish, but this case study doesn’t quite sustain the argument.

Wisconsin, birthplace of the Republican Party and Robert M. LaFollette’s Progressives, let alone Senator Joseph McCarthy, is set up to illustrate the issues. Public employees mobilized in February 2011 against newly elected Republican Governor Scott Walker’s introduction of legislation, as he promised in his campaign, to eliminate their collective bargaining rights and cut pension and health benefits. Public employees and their supporters by the thousands rallied to the capitol in Madison to try and stop its passage, but an only somewhat modified version was signed into law a month later. Before the year ended, those infuriated demonstrators collected enough petition signatures for a recall election the following June.

As in directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin’s Trouble the Water (2008), their strength is the intimate verité scenes of closely following individuals through a crisis. Here they hone in on three dedicated public employees in different cities (all lifelong conservative Republicans and two are military veterans) who are riled up, as if they have taken Joe Hill’s advice, “Don’t waste any time in mourning. Organize.”

Seen at long hours at work, at home with their financially struggling families, and then energetically volunteering for the recall are Brian Cunningham, a correctional officer; Dee Ives, a registered nurse; and Mari Jo Kabat, a librarian. For entertaining good measure, the film (more than a bit distractingly) adds a colorful, middle-aged first-time voter who looks straight out of Sons of Anarchy—a small businessman who repairs and customizes Harley Davidson motorcycles. In an age when social media postings are considered activism, this is an admirable primer on old-fashioned, retail political organizing, even though they’re financially out-gunned.

Compared to these native stalwarts, less compelling are the interspersed interviews with experts and the reams of statistics on the millions of dollars from “outside interests” that were poured into Governor Walker’s first election, and then this challenge, primarily through political action committees (PACs). While most of these issues have already been well-covered in the media, the specific targeting of billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch usefully diagrams the family tree and its interlocking, national political interests.

But about two-thirds through, a map shows the several factories and plants owned by Koch Industries, the second largest privately-owned company in the country, primarily involved in petrochemicals and manufacturing. Wouldn’t that mean the Kochs are not “outside interests” or that this isn’t just about their overall conservative ideology? So where’s the investigation into what their company does in Wisconsin—number of employees, taxes or philanthropy, its environmental or labor record—that they would want to influence by lobbying the state government? The premise seems to just assume those factors don’t matter in protesting that corporations shouldn’t have political rights or that billionaires’ contributions should be restricted.

The filmmakers wear as a badge of honor that they weren’t able to receive public television support due to reports of Koch influence, and they substituted those funds with a Kickstarter campaign. Too bad they didn’t turn that grudge and resulting freedom into a more hard-hitting documentary that would more effectively prove their points.