I saw a few movies at the Tribeca Film Festival over the weekend, and the one I was most impressed by was Alex Gibney’s documentary on the rise and fall of former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, tentatively titled Client 9.

Spitzer cooperated with the film, which traces his arc from privileged Manhattan kid to Wall Street-busting New York attorney general to allegedly tyranical governor to perhaps the world’s most famous patron of call girls.

It breaks some interesting news: that Spitzer saw Ashley “I love sex” Dupree, whom we’ve all seen photos of, only once. In fact, there was another woman whom Spitzer favored and saw on numerous occasions in numerous cities; she grants Gibney an interview, but will not allow the footage to be used, and so Gibney recreates his interview with her using an actress. The woman comes across as smart, likable, nothing like Dupree (it would have been fascinating if she’d been the woman with whom he was publicly linked rather than the brain-dead but body-electric Dupree). She’s now a commodities trader.

More important, Gibney compiles a significant amount of circumstantial evidence suggesting that Spitzer’s fall was the result of calculated actions by political and financial enemies.

One example: In the FBI affidavit (I think) dealing with the Emperors’ Club, the escort service Spitzer used, there are nine “clients” mentioned. Eight of them are dealt with in less than one one page worth of material. Spitzer—Client 9—receives five pages of detail, including the infamous “he kept his socks on” factoid, which proves to be not even true—but would make it easy for any reporter to whom the document was leaked to put two and two together and figure out that Client 9 was New York’s crusading anti-corruption governor.

Another example: The FBI claimed that it discovered Spitzer after looking into a suspicious wire transfer from what proved to be his account of three or four thousand dollars. There are apparently thousands of such wire transfers every day. Why did the FBI investigate this one?

Who are the likely culprits?

Former AIG CEO and Spitzer-hater Hank Greenberg, former director of the New York Stock exchange and Spitzer-hater Kenneth Langone (they tangled over the obscene pay for NYSE chair Dick Grasso), Republican political consultant Roger Stone, and the Bush Justice Department.

There are issues in Client 9, if that’s what this film is to be called, that go well beyond questions of sex, fidelity and morality, but have to do with abuse of power for political and financial gain.

Who wins from this?

Gibney’s answer is footage of Wall Street traders bursting into applause as TV screens show Spitzer’s resignation press conference.

It’s hard not to conclude that, while Spitzer stupidly left himself vulnerable, and that he was a hard-to-like hypocrite, his enemies dug up the evidence, distributed it, leaked it…and toppled a governor who had badly wounded them with his prosecutions.

And we, the public, so obsessed with titillation, played our part like the dupes the Spitzer-topplers presumed us to be, making such a frenzied hullabaloo over a married man paying for sex that Spitzer had no choice but to resign—and a populist champion was ousted from office. (The film is more nuanced about this than I’m being.)

Did the punishment fit the crime? Is New York better off for it? (Clearly not.) Who really was behind the collection of dissemination of damaging information about Spitzer? And could Spitzer possibly make a comeback?

It’s a fascinating film and a powerful piece of journalism. Mr. Gibney, who also made the Academy Award-winning doc Taxi to the Dark Side, deserves all the attention he’s going to get for this film. It’s hot stuff.