A disturbing re-creation of cardinal sins

“Our Fathers,” premiering tonight on Showtime, is a TV movie about the sex scandals that shook the Boston archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church in the early years of this century, when journalists and lawyers and victims emboldened to speak out brought to light a policy of moving “predator priests” from parish to parish rather than removing them from the priesthood, of paying off their victims to remain quiet, and of keeping it all from the police. This was not the case in Boston alone, but it’s where it became news -- and led to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law when public outcry grew too loud for even the pope to ignore. It also stirred up discussion over the future of the church, of the celibacy of priests and the relation of the laity to the clergy.

There are dramas to be written about such things, though I’m not sure they’re docudramas -- by which I mean films that try, as far as their budget and the law allows, to re-create actual events, with actors playing real people. I understand the impulse to make such pictures -- you’ve got a good story, and in this case even a worthy story, and viewers like to see history “come alive” -- but the facts of any real-world case, and the workings of any single real human mind, are always more complex than a couple of hours can convey.

“Our Fathers,” which is based on the book “Our Fathers: The Secret Life of the Catholic Church in an Age of Scandal,” by Newsweek writer David France, can’t be faulted for lacking ambition, but in trying to represent so many sides of the story from so many perspectives -- the late pope’s in it, even -- it doesn’t quite do justice to any. That’s not to say it’s bad: It’s serious and intelligent, it contains a few scenes of real power, and there is a certain detective-story delight in watching clues unearthed and the corrupt mighty brought low (see, for example, “All the President’s Men,” which this film seems to want to channel at times). But I didn’t come away with an enhanced understanding of the events, or thinking I’d seen “what really happened.”

Neither did I ever feel that I wasn’t watching actors act, though there are some very good actors here, and they are a pleasure to watch. Ted Danson, easy to underrate, plays lawyer Mitchell Garabedian and carries his reams of expository dialogue with ease. Although his job is mainly to get other people to talk, he’s the closest thing in the film to a lead character, and the more it sticks with him the better it is. Ellen Burstyn, who does not come around often enough, plays the mother of seven abused boys, and it’s good to see her. Daniel Baldwin and Chris Bauer are especially fine as grown victims of childhood abuse. Bauer’s scenes with his drinking buddies, who share molestation as a kind of point of twisted nostalgia, even humor, are some of the film’s best: They seem more real for being less expected, while the flashbacks to the molestation scenes, which are heightened with music and dramatic camerawork, feel staged -- an insult, almost, to the awful actuality of the events they portray. Brian Dennehy plays Father Dominic Spagnolia, an outspoken critic of Cardinal Law, whose own past comes back to haunt him; it is a big, Brian Dennehy performance.

As Law, who after his resignation was kicked upstairs to the Vatican, Christopher Plummer has the toughest time of it, charged as he is with finding a plausible approach to playing a man whose handling of abusive priests under his charge was at best inept and cowardly and at worst arrogant and criminal. Law is the villain of the piece but can’t be played simply as a villain; in the end, in trying to split the difference, Plummer’s Law seems so befuddled that it’s hard to imagine him in charge of anything at all.