It’s less common, however, to see these same themes of extra-legal criminal punishment and the thorny personal consequences of taking justice into one’s own hands explored so unambiguously in nonfiction. But that’s just what happens in the interesting, forthrightly titled After the Murder of Albert Lima, which after a festival run including dates at DOC NYC and the Woodstock Film Festival recently enjoyed its world premiere on streaming platform Crackle.

Directed by Aengus James, and executive produced by American broadcast journalist and TV host Meredith Vieira, the movie takes a judgment-free, fly-on-the-wall approach to a plotted act of moral scale-balancing. Still understandably haunted by the murder of his father Albert, nearly a decade-and-a-half earlier during a trip to Honduras and seeking closure for himself and his mother after being consistently failed by governmental agencies, personal trainer Paul Lima embarks upon an odd journey, traveling to a foreign country with hired help in an attempt to find and kidnap the man he holds responsible for his father’s death, and then deliver him to prison.

While quixotic, Paul’s trip isn’t rooted in misguided fantasy; the object of his search, Oral Coleman, is the eldest brother of a family for whom his immigrant father Albert had attempted to do a financial favor. Part of the movie fleshes out the history of this act of openhearted giving (a loan for their family bakery, unpaid and then litigated unsuccessfully in Honduran courts), which lends the tragedy extra weight. Arrested for the murder, Coleman bribed his way out of jail, was finally years later convicted in absentia, and has now settled into a seemingly well-fortified life as a drug peddler on the island of Roatán.

While the film’s treatment of Paul’s grief is sincere and presented in an unvarnished and affecting manner, it is the two bounty hunters he contracts, Art Torres and Zora Korhonen, which help lend proceedings an off-kilter vibe, and render the movie the type of which would feel quite at home in the hands of Joel and Ethan Coen for an only-slightly-fictionalized adaptation. This pair (with a viewer never quite able to discern whether or not they’re a couple) appears almost from the start, if not in over their heads, then at the very least alarmingly incurious.

Art, in particular, seems to abhor a plan, preferring to “play things by ear,” and mask any nervousness by eating. Things go further sideways when Paul’s advance shipment of handcuffs and mace never arrives. By the time Zora ends up accidentally discharging, in their rental vehicle, a gun which they’ve managed to procure, there exists an entirely parallel track of unanticipated tension within the film – what if these bounty hunters, either through incompetence or simply wanting to do right by Paul, actually kidnap the wrong man, and somehow end up triggering a diplomatic incident? This sense of pulsating uncertainty lends After the Murder of Albert Lima a unique watchability.

James, who works with a very light, unobtrusive technical package here, has an obvious interest in and penchant for exploring the intersections of the sordid, bizarre, and colorful, having previously served as a producer on Scandalous: The True Story of the National Enquirer. That 2019 documentary, spanning decades in the history of the dubious and yet highly influential weekly newspaper, provided a snapshot of how, in part, the United States ended up with a tabloid-ratified president – of how baser instincts and the lack of moored, guiding principles lead to bad decisions and a bad place. In telling a much more discrete and focused story, meanwhile, After the Murder of Albert Lima, does somewhat the same, shining a light on the limits of bureaucracy, the terrible burden of grief, and how those two factors can commingle to warp judgment.