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Most illuminating are the various journalists, attorneys, witnesses, and admissions counselors who testify to the case

The gripping documentary Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal shifts the spotlight back to Singer, played in re-enactments by Matthew Modine with dialogue taken directly from wiretaps, to understand how a flip flop-clad former basketball coach rebranded himself as an academic glad-hander for the 1 percent.

Even with the re-enactments, this is a pretty straightforward documentary. It’s nonetheless valuable for the way that it takes a complicated story and breaks it down into understandable pieces.

Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admission Scandal is a documentary, yet Matthew Modine does some of the most oddly compelling work of his career in a fully realized performance in this movie.

As a piece of filmmaking, the trick of Operation Varsity Blues is that it provides first-rate entertainment even as it incites sputtering rage.

What becomes clear in this film—if it wasn’t obvious already—is that sometimes the ways in which the rich and powerful thrive have nothing to do with merit. Sometimes they just buy access to people like Singer, who are good at selling their customers a story they can tell.

The true drama in the admissions scandal is not the ringleader or the celebrities and hedge-fund magnates who hired him but what this Hunger Games scenario means for all the children whose parents cannot afford his services.

The script’s skillful tension makes it easy to forgive Operation Varsity Blues its occasionally clunky missteps. At least it tells a tale as old as time — of the insatiable rapacity of those who already have more than anyone else — with novel relish.

The best nuggets come from the interviews, as when a lawyer remarks that when it comes to white-collar criminals, they historically have no filter on the phone.

Operation Varsity Blues provides more than proof that the American educational system is broken; it shows how many people want it to stay that way.