DOCUDRAMA ATTEMPTS TO REVEAL TRUTH, BUT ONLY CONFUSES THINGS FURTHER THAN BEFORE.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

``Who Killed Atlanta's Children?'' doesn't answer its own question. Instead, it jumbles a series of obfuscating factoids, derivative melodrama and meaningless conjecture in an admittedly often interesting, usually overheated fashion that concludes - well, not much, really.

It's a telefilm that plays so fast and loose with the facts that it doesn't even use the real name of the journalist who helped break the story, even though he produced the film (Rudy Langlais, here named Ron Larson and played by Gregory Hines). By film's end, you're not sure what to believe, except that someone messed up big-time - but was it in the course of the investigation or the movie? Or both?

Larson is an editor at Spin magazine at constant loggerheads with reporter Pat Laughlin (James Belushi) over the inflammatory tone and content of the writer's work (since the film is written and directed by the same guy, Charles Robert Carner, there's no danger of such dialogue here). Nonetheless, Larson and Laughlin venture together to Atlanta. They pursue claims that the investigation of the infamous string of African-American child murders in the early '80s - which concluded with the conviction of one Wayne Williams, an African-American, of two of the murders that seemed peripherally linked at best to the other 30 or so - was incompetently botched, at best, or at worst criminally tainted.

Carner's script runs through a number of scenarios, some of which have been discredited, others of which have not been verified, others of which seem wholly likely but unsubstantiated. Piles of documents conveniently turn up on Larson and Laughlin's doorstep, leading to more bickering and dramatic (if fairly irrelevant) personal revelations.

Hines' turn is smooth and credible; Belushi adds but another earnest lout to his resume. Carner aspires for Oliver Stone-like portent but is undone by his predilection for dream sequences, lonesome-road mayhem and exposition that absolutely must be delivered in strip clubs. If in fact Carner felt he was dealing with important material here, he might have been inclined to let the fairly compelling facts speak for themselves rather than travel the lurid route again and again.

The facts

--The show: ``Who Killed Atlanta's Children?''

--What: Docudrama about Spin magazine reporters investigating a racially motivated conspiracy to cover up the child murders of the '80s.

--The stars: Gregory Hines, James Belushi.

--Where: Showtime.

--When: 8 tonight; also Wednesday.

--Our rating:

CAPTION(S):

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Photo:

James Belushi, left, and Gregory Hines play crusading journalists reinvestigating a decades-old case in Showtime's ``Who Killed Atlanta's Children?'' premiering tonight.