Those, like myself, who are old enough to remember the reality TV craze that was To Catch a Predator, may not have stuck around long enough to see the ramifications. The Dateline NBC series ran from 2004-2008 and focused on the luring and exposure of pedophiles through televised sting operations. The men, because it was always dudes, were baited by someone pretending to be an underage minor, then lured to a home where an actor portraying the youth would let them in. But before anything sexual could happen, host Chris Hansen would enter, read some of the disgusting online discourse, ask the predator what they were thinking, much to their humiliation, then allow them to leave which is when police would tackle and arrest them. You might ask yourself, “So what’s the problem with exposing and arresting a bunch of pedos?” Nothing, if it’s done for the right reasons and in the right way.
Lance Oppenheim’s feature debut Primetime would seek to explore the morality of creating entertainment out of what could charitably be called “entrapment”, but the film lacks a clear direction and clear perspective. Robert Pattinson looks like Hansen, and sometimes he even sounds like him. He has this overly theatrical way of hanging on certain syllables for dramatic effect, a side effect of the pompous attitude he carries around. Hanson doesn’t consider what he’s doing at all. He’s too busy slapping himself on the back when the show gets picked up for a prime time slot on NBC, going head-to-head with Lost. Fans of the latter show will get a kick out of the frequent references to that once-powerful TV juggernaut. Hansen has questions of morality surrounding himself personally, too. He’s not a particularly good father or husband, with Anna Faris in a small role as his beleaguered wife. And there are allegations of infidelity that Hansen is trying to duck and hide from. How is he the right guy to judging the right and wrong of anything?
Merritt Wever can always be counted on to give a strong performance, and she’s great as fictional producer Andie Bender, an aggressive ratings grabber who is constantly pushing the show’s limits. Skyler Gisono plays another fictional figure, angel-faced actor Dan Plumb, who is brought in as “Decoy Dan”, the attractive jailbat too irresistible for the pedos to deny. The acting is strong across the board, with Pattinson delivering one of his best performances as Hansen, a detestible “hero” who read too few of his own press clippings. Hansen is the kind of guy who can wave aside any ethical issues by declaring that he’s cleansing the world of evil, when really he just wants the kind of journalistic respect that someone like anchor Stone Phillips gets. Pattinson is electric, and elevates Primetime when it loses its way, as it often does.
Is there anybody in the world who is interested in the extramarital affairs and workplace drama of Chris Hansen? Probably not, but that’s where Primetime puts the majority of its focus when the real meat is To Catch a Predator and its impact on him and society as a whole. It’s strange that Oppenheim, a documentarian of some renown, doesn’t seem that interested in exploring the phenomenon of law enforcement television (including shows like COPS and America’s Most Wanted) that turned justice into a circus for our amusement. However, he is interested in dramatizing some of the show’s most questionable moments; the arrest of a predator with cerebral palsy, and the one that most directly led to the series’ demise, the suicide of a prominent political figure in Texas. Primetime is more interested in the events but not whether Hansen, or anyone involved with To Catch a Predator, was changed by any of it.
Chances are that we’ll learn more about Hansen in the present than by anything that happened in the past. He’s purchased ad time ahead of theatrical presentations of the film, and is seriously considerig legal action against A24. Hansen is an attention-seeker, and chances are he’ll tune his opinion depending on how Primetime is received.
Primetime opens in theaters on September 25th.
