I did not know the most famous daredevil of the 1970s, Evel Knievel, was born in Butte, Montana, until I watched the documentary Being Evel. The man, whose career was pretty much over around the time he first entered the consciousness of my childhood (the early '80s), was a complete mystery to me until I learned this fact. Before he was world-famous, he was famous in this former copper-mining town, the Detroit of Montana, for being a bad boy—a hustler, a thug, a pimp. Straight outta Butte—that's Knievel's story in a nutshell.

But the director of this pretty straightforward documentary, Daniel Junge, thought there was more to its subject than his hometown, and this is why Being Evel is not as great or profound as it could have been. It does not spend enough time in Butte but instead too eagerly rushes to Knievel's first famous stunt at Caesars Palace in 1967. He was born in 1938, and so was already in his late 20s when he hit the big time with that failed jump.

If Being Evel really wanted to get to the soul of its subject (his capes, his crude ambition, his cheap guns, his bevy of beautiful women, his heavy drinking, his almost original form of American madness, and his rickety theology), it should have devoted not one-tenth but a good two-thirds of its 99 minutes to this town (its history, its mad miners, its whorehouses, its labor unions, its big pit, its former glory, its bleak future, its terrific rise, and its terrific fall). Every jump Knievel made told the story of Butte, Montana.