Primetime

Grade: B-

The height of Dateline NBC’s To Catch a Predator was a generation ago. People (all men — ever notice that?) would chat online and build a “relationship” with someone claiming to be underage. They were actually people working on the show, who would lure these predators to what they said was their house, which had been rigged with cameras, a hidden camera crew, and law enforcement waiting outside. The show’s host, Chris Hansen, would eventually emerge from behind a curtain with his usual phrases to introduce himself. “I’m Chris Hansen, with Dateline NBC. Why don’t you take a seat?” “What are you doing here?” “What do you think should happen to you?” “That’s not up to me.” “You’re free to leave through the same door you came in.”

For years, viewers have contemplated and discussed whether the show’s tactics constitute entrapment. I can’t be the only one who has wondered if Hansen is a hypocrite. He hasn’t preyed on underage children, but he has set up meetings with people he shouldn’t be meeting with, to do things with them he shouldn’t be doing. How would he feel if he got unexpectedly “Hansened” by a surprise guest dropping in to interrupt one of his extramarital affairs in progress?

Primetime takes place in or around 2006, when To Catch a Predator was moved to an ambitious time slot. The movie makes a big deal out of the show having to compete with ABC’s Lost. As Chris Hansen, Robert Pattinson gives one of my favorite performances of the year, for the second time this year. He successfully walks the complicated tightrope that is the biopic performance. This may be one of the easier ones to embody, because everything is so heightened and gimmicky. Pattinson is up to the task, and is electrifying to watch.

The film deserves a lot of credit for establishing a motif and unflinchingly, unapologetically committing to it. “This is the movie we’re going to give you. It’s going to look and sound like this the whole time. We are not wavering from it.” That seems to be the message it sends us from the start. I could best describe it as a faux documentary. And incidentally, director Lance Oppenheim has another film out in a couple of weeks: the documentary You Can See Everything. Primetime made me think of Adam McKay’s Vice and The Big Short. The visuals are washed out and grainy, there are a lot of quick cuts, and the score is extra dramatic, heavy on the strings. This is all very fun to take in on a superficial level, but I kept hoping for a deeper, more real movie that never arrived.

Whatever statement it may or may not be making about whether the show exists to do good or just chase ratings doesn’t shine through, as it becomes more about spectacle than storytelling. In the midst of a movie that never stops looking and sounding interesting, I struggled to get a grasp on how to feel about the characters, much less know what they want and how they feel about everything. Primetime is ultimately a great cover to a hollow book, but it manages to go out with a bang, when the famous Hansen line “What would have happened if I wasn’t here?” gets brought home in a chilling way.

Grade: B-