"There are a lot of us that they called outlaws back in the beginning, but Merle was a real outlaw" says a laughing Kris Kristofferson in this penetrating profile of "the poet of the working man," Merle Haggard. The doc charts his rise from a hard-scrabble early life, including prison time, and the death of his father, to topping the country-music charts, and features a wealth of archival footage and remarks from Haggard, family and such friends as Kristofferson, Keith Richards and Tanya Tucker.