The two-hour film touches on various facets of Amazon’s vast empire, from Alexa and its massively successful Amazon Web Services cloud division through to entertainment on Prime Video and its bricks-and-mortar retail exploits such as Whole Foods. Twitch is perhaps the most prominent division that doesn’t really come under the spotlight.

The filmmakers devote sizable segments of the documentary to matters that warrant a close look, including worker conditions at fulfillment centers, Amazon’s battles with book publishers, data collection, issues with products from third-party sellers and the whole HQ2 debacle. Complaints about Amazon becoming a monopoly (and resulting scrutiny from antitrust officials) take up a chunk of the runtime, as do troubling privacy issues with the likes of Alexa, Ring and Rekognition.

The film covers issues spanning Amazon’s entire history, including prominent incidents from the last couple of months. For one thing, it looks at Amazon’s tussle with the government over a major cloud computing deal. Amazon claimed that President Donald Trump’s “personal vendetta” against it and Bezos (supposedly stemming from critical coverage of him in Bezos’ Washington Post) cost it a $10 billion Department of Defense contract. Footage from a House antitrust hearing held last month is included as well.

As the title suggests, the documentary profiles Bezos to a certain extent too, covering topics such as his passion for space exploration and even his complicated personal life. Early employees talk about what it was like interviewing with the company’s CEO in its nascent days — he was apparently very interested in their SAT scores, for some reason.

While Frontline didn’t interview Bezos here, the documentary includes prescient concerns he raised in 2000 about surveillance. “I believe that privacy is going to be one of the most prominent issues of the 21st century,” he said at the time. “Do you really want cameras on every corner?” The contrast between then and now is jarring, given Amazon’s expansive work in facial recognition and Ring providing police with footage and data from its cameras.

A number of Amazon executives do appear in the documentary, and, as you might expect, they largely toe the company line. The questions raised by book publishers and former employees in interviews are more compelling. They air concerns on topics as varied as Amazon’s grueling demands of warehouse workers and smart speaker privacy.

Even if you are reasonably au fait with the ins and outs of Amazon, you’ll probably learn a thing or two here. There might not be too many details that’ll make your jaw drop if you follow Amazon closely, but the smart, well-reported documentary packs a solid overview of Bezos and his company into a relatively short time frame. Still, if you have a friend or relative who doesn’t know much about Amazon but places Prime orders regularly, they might be interested to learn about how the company became so ubiquitous.

Amazon acquired Ring last year for $1 billion in an attempt to counter Google’s purchase of Nest. The company launched its Neighbors app shortly afterwards, explaining that it would allow users to reports suspicious goings-on and report them to law enforcement.

However, several reports raised privacy concerns about a mega-corporation teaming with law enforcement. Privacy and civil liberties experts were particularly concerned about the ease with which police departments could request Ring surveillance videos without a warrant.

In light of evidence that existing facial recognition technology disproportionately misidentifies African Americans and Latinos, a product like this has the potential to catalyze racial profiling and harm people of color.

What caught lawmakers’ eyes, however, was the risk of Amazon marrying its controversial facial recognition technology with Ring’s surveillance network. Such technology has shown to be poor at recognizing people of color, in one case misidentifying 26 California lawmakers as criminals.

“I am particularly alarmed to learn that Ring is pursuing facial recognition technology with the potential to flag certain individuals as suspicious based on their biometric information,” wrote Markey. “In light of evidence that existing facial recognition technology disproportionately misidentifies African Americans and Latinos, a product like this has the potential to catalyze racial profiling and harm people of color.”

Markey also included a list of ten questions, asking which law enforcement entities have access to Ring data, whether they share it with others and whether Ring consulted with experts on civil liberties and criminal justice before implementing the system. Ring told Gizmodo that it’s reviewing the letter, but declined to comment further. The company has until September 26th to respond.