STEVIE

Painful but compelling character study.

Running time: 140 minutes. Not rated (language, sexual themes). At the Film Forum, Houston Street, between Sixth Avenue and Varick Street.

‘STEVIE,” the new documentary from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Steve James, is overly long and uncomfortably intrusive, but never less than compelling.

In a 180-degree departure from his rousing 1995 basketball doc “Hoop Dreams,” James heads down to southern Illinois to turn a candid camera on one man’s wretched life.

That man is Stevie Fielding, a 24-year-old wreck for whom the director acted as Big Brother in the mid-’80s.

James lost contact with him after he moved to Chicago, but spurred by guilt, curiosity – and no doubt sensing a good story – he revisits the bleak trailer town of Pomona to check in on Stevie.

He left behind a troubled yet oddly likable kid, but 10 years on, he finds Stevie balding and tattooed, with rotting teeth and a rapidly growing rap sheet.

During the course of filming, Stevie is arrested for molesting his 8-year-old cousin – and James looks increasingly pained and miserable as he continues to follow his story, prodding the emotions of the people in Stevie’s life.

He interviews Stevie’s mother, Bernice, who routinely beat her illegitimate son before abandoning him to the care of his step-grandmother, Verna, who defends the misbehaving young man like a lioness.

He also speaks with Stevie’s stepsister, Brenda, and his developmentally challenged girlfriend, Tonya, gradually painting a picture of dysfunction that leaves one wondering whether Stevie – who ricocheted between foster homes where he was further physically and sexually abused – ever had a chance.

Beyond making the point that violence begets violence, and highlighting the flaws in a social system that fails those who need it most, James makes no excuses for the damaged Stevie.

He is compassionate, never condescending. And by inserting himself into the story, adds yet another shade of gray to a broad but intensive character study.