Remember 2006? Reality television was in vogue, LeBron James was in the Rust Belt, and a Republican president had embroiled the country in a senseless war in the Middle East. In other words, not much has changed. But Primetime, Lance Oppenheim’s gripping and unsettling depiction of the ickiness surrounding Chris Hansen’s To Catch a Predator series, feels unnervingly rooted in a particular moment in history, even as it plainly speaks to the media of today. It recalls a time when premium cable was ascendant and networks were grasping to evolve in order to retain their supremacy. Not all of the ideas they latched onto were good ones.
The first time we see Hansen (Robert Pattinson) in Primetime, he’s murmuring sweet nothings to himself (“I will undress you, and you will undress me”), like an actor running lines. But it’s his second appearance, swishing through a makeshift curtain on a balcony, when he really introduces himself—both to us, and to the unwitting target of Predator’s latest sting. “Big night planned?” he purrs in a honeyed rumble, his face sporting the self-satisfied smirk of a cat who enjoys taunting mice. “Take a seat,” he continues to the mystified man standing beneath him (Tony Revolori) who’d arrived with the hope of bedding a pubescent girl, and who soon realizes, with dawning horror, that he’s inadvertently achieved the dream of so many American strivers: He’s on TV.
Watching Primetime, it’s unclear exactly what Oppenheim thinks of the real Hansen, but it’s very clear what Pattinson’s Hansen thinks of himself. He is a righteous crusader, a champion of truth and justice whose sacred duty is not just to entrap locate criminals but to broadcast them—to inform the viewing public of the menaces prowling their neighborhoods. Sure, he may be crudely commodifying the work of law enforcement and warping it into populist entertainment, but that’s just a natural consequence of his inherent showmanship. For him, being beamed directly into your home ahead of the local news isn’t just a professional goal; it’s his destiny.
Pattinson’s portrayal of Hansen is so chillingly magnetic, you’re liable to miss the subtlety of his craft. Whether he accurately represents the real person, I can’t say (I never watched Predator), but his coiffed hair and pinched voice evoke an ethically compromised man who hungers for notoriety. Yet there is also a studied quality to Hansen’s bearing, as though he’s constantly fine-tuning his demeanor and optimizing it for the light of the nearest camera. It’s a performance of a performance, and it further substantiates Pattison—extending a phenomenal year that began with his sweatily self-loathing work in The Drama and continued with his villainous turn in The Odyssey (he caps things with Dune 3 in December)—as one of contemporary cinema’s finest, most mesmerizing actors.
Oppenheim, a documentarian making his fiction debut, at first refuses to embellish his star’s repellent charisma, instead emphasizing it via forthright, clinical dispassion. Structurally speaking, Primetime is a docudrama, chronicling the developments leading up to Predator’s short-lived run in a coveted NBC timeslot. (The screenplay, by Ajon Singh, is based on Luke Dittrich’s Esquire article titled, “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die.”) A network executive, Jeff Zucker (played by… Jeff Zucker?!?), expresses personal distaste for the show, but he doesn’t let his feelings guide his business instincts, and he recognizes that Hansen seems to be tapping into some sort of zeitgeist. In one of many liberties that Oppenheim and Singh take with the factual record, Zucker programs Predator to air opposite Lost, hoping that the fictional adventure of Flight 815’s survivors will pale next to the real-life, stomach-churning footage captured (and created) by Hansen and his crew.
The breadth of philosophical arguments inspired by the production of To Catch a Predator—the contrast between severity and sensationalism, the line blurring observation and entrapment, the probity of turning sting operations into popcorn thrills—is too vast and voluble to capture in a 109-minute movie, and Oppenheim seems to realize this. Rather than constructing Primetime as a hit piece or a work of agitprop, he homes in on his characters and conjures an atmosphere of roiling discontent. “You’re either with me or against me,” Hansen says at one point. It’s calculated rhetoric that’s seductively reductive, because if you’re against Chris Hansen, then what are you for? Pedophilia?
The two figures who are decidedly with Hansen, at least at first, function as Primetime’s twin compasses, their needles spinning around his black hole of monomania. One is Andie (Merritt Wever, just right), a Dateline producer whose job is to balance Hansen’s impulsivity and flamboyance with moderation and precision. The other is Dan (a heartbreaking Skyler Gisondo), a young and flailing actor who’s just trying to get his damn SAG card, and whom we first meet auditioning with an off-key rendition of a song from Rent. Dan’s Hollywood prospects seem dim, but Andie eyes him as a viable “decoy”—one of Predator’s stunt performers who can credibly portray a young teenager, luring lecherous targets into camera-nested homes before Hansen appears to yank the red carpet out from under them. (Phoebe Bridgers plays a more established, gender-switching decoy; earlier this year, Oppenheim directed her “Lost Boys” video, in which Gisondo had a central role.)
As Primetime progresses, it grows increasingly tense and commensurately more ragged. Hansen, spurred by middling ratings, resolves to expose a “whale” in Texas—a government official whose hypocrisy will distinguish him from the sleazy reprobates Hansen typically exposes. Oppenheim mirrors this swelling obsession with agitated stylistic choices: choppy editing, discordant music (the score is by Ari Balouzian), possibly hallucinatory flashbacks to an incident in India. It’s engrossing but also unpleasant, as Hansen’s fanatical drive minimizes the character’s depth. You half-expect Oppenheim to reveal him as a closeted molester, if only to manufacture some catharsis; instead, he supplies a jittery subplot—Hansen is dogged by sinister phone calls from a tabloid regarding an extramarital affair—that lacks any payoff.
To the extent Primetime operates as a tragedy, its true emotional center is Dan, whose arc begins with hopeful enthusiasm, darkens with uncertainty, and resolves with disillusionment. (For her part, Andie ends up selling her soul after only fleeting moments of hesitation.) Dan periodically chats with a fellow struggling actor (The Paper’s Eric Rahill) who responds to his sudden success with both admiration and confusion. The fraying of their friendship proves oddly poignant, and Gisondo does brilliant interior work mapping a storm cloud of ambition, fear, and guilt.
Hansen himself has no room for self-doubt. But might Primetime, in dramatizing such a sordid episode in TV history, be indulging in the same exploitative tactics that animated To Catch a Predator? I lean no. The movie is troubling, sure, but its rigorous, observational method prevents it from coming off as bellicose or shrill. Instead, in soberly examining a fraught time in American culture, it amasses a sturdy moral center that its protagonist craves but could never possess. Hansen developed a series that fed on rage; Primetime is a document of despair.
It also comprehends the mighty power of television as a persuasive medium. In collaborating with police on an impending raid—note the department’s glitzy banner that reads, “Welcome, Predator Team!”—Andie conceives the idea of mounting cameras on top of guns. It’s a savvy maneuver that also demonstrates how the tools of her trade, when applied with sufficient intention, can serve as their own form of weaponry. After all, the simplest way to make a TV show is to point and shoot.
Grade: B+
Jeremy Beck is the editor-in-chief of MovieManifesto. He watches more movies and television than he probably should.