Everybody likes a good art heist, in theory, thanks to our cinematically-warped image of art thieves as gentlemanly criminals. But Don Argott's documentary The Art of the Steal is the rare heist film where we root for the art owners, not the cunning thieves. The bad guys here are a powerful cabal of politicians, media entities, greedheads, and massive public charity organizations, while the good guys are a scrappy bunch of art scholars. What are they fighting over? Control of a collection believed to be the greatest repository of Post-Impressionist and early Modern art, and is rumored to be worth at least $25 billion. Argott's film starts off smartly, laying the historical groundwork for the modern controversy to follow. The combative presence behind it all is Albert C. Barnes, a working-class Philadelphia guy who made a fortune in the early twentieth century by inventing a new antiseptic silver compound, Argyrol, and then spent it on the arts. In 1922, he constructed a building in the leafy Philadelphia suburb of Merion to house a foundation for art education. Barnes then started collecting works from new artists he thought significant – and since the art community didn't agree, he was able to buy their works for a song. Barnes brought back to Philadelphia steals by Renoir, Cezanne, and others (there are stories, not mentioned in the film, of him paying $20 for a Picasso, $10 for a Rousseau, $50 on a Matisse). After exhibiting his findings, Philadelphia's elites turned up their nose at works seen as too modern at best and obscene at worst. Barnes retired to his Foundation afterward, showing his ever-growing and meticulously curated collection only for the Foundation's art students. He rebuffed both art critics and society swells, scornfully refusing to tour the collection or fling his doors open to the public. Barnes's purpose was the appreciation of art, not enabling tourists and wealthy donors to shuttle thoughtlessly from one white-walled space to the next, just to line the city fathers' pockets. It's this decades-long feud between Barnes and the art-world mavens – particularly the conservative Walter Annenberg, who ran the local paper and had particular animus for Barnes' New Deal liberal ways – which The Art of the Steal is truly about. This is unfortunate, as a better film could have been made from the story of Barnes's iconoclastic populism and his eye for those masters whose work became the backbone of today's blockbuster museum-shows, the apotheosis of the mercantile art entertainment that he so despised. Argott, however, focuses on the battle over Barnes's legacy, once the powers-that-be -- those fundraising institutions and wealthy tastemakers who constitute the modern art world – decided that his art was worth something. Barnes died in 1951, and for several decades after that, the Foundation was kept running by a determined "apostle," Violette de Mazia, who fiercely defended the iron-clad terms of Barnes's will. Once she passed from the scene, power transferred to a weak-willed board of directors (many drawn from Lincoln University, a local black college to which Barnes, a staunch civil rights advocate, had left control of the Foundation), who fumbled numerous opportunities to keep the Foundation in good shape. Hovering like vultures were local politicians, who wanted to move the collection to a tourist-friendly downtown location, and huge nonprofits like the Pew Charitable Trusts. In what must be a first for American documentary film, The Art of the Steal constructs a conspiracy theory in which the greatest villains are nonprofit foundations who fought to invalidate the terms of Barnes's will. Although it seems clear those who wanted the Barnes art for their own purposes hardly played fair, Argott critically overdoes the villainy involved. Wheeling out one pro-Barnes activist after another (mostly former students) to make their case, the filmmaker has them repeatedly restate their claim (leave the Barnes Foundation where it is, don't turn it into another art mall) with little variation. If nothing else, The Art of the Steal makes a solid case for the Barnes Foundation being not just one of the world's most astonishing collections of art, but also one of its most spectacularly presented. But by venting so much spleen at the powerful interests who want to turn it into a tourist attraction, the film vilifies one group while letting another (the Foundation's woefully inept board of directors) off the hook almost completely. Argott also misses an opportunity for a deeper examination of the divide between true art connoisseurship and mass-marketed tourist commerce – the issue is certainly raised, but in a way that comes off as more elitist arrogance than anything else. If the forces of evil do indeed win, the worst that will happen is that Barnes's art will be seen by many more people – and they'll be able to buy a $15 T-shirt proving that they did so. It's hardly the crime of the century.