‘Primetime’ Is Ready for Prime Time, But Maybe That’s About All

The first thing we see in Lance Oppenheim’s debut scripted feature Primetime is the same thing we’d see tuning into the wildly popular Dateline NBC investigative series To Catch a Predator in 2006. A man arrives at a house expecting to have sex with a minor, unaware he’s on camera until the adult actor masquerading as the child exits, and out walks TV journalist Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson) instead, to briefly interview the offender before he’s arrested. The approach is hard-nosed on the part of both Oppenheim — who opts not to show us the origins of the series or the consequences of its aftermath — and Pattinson, who pulls no punches in his ball-of-nerves depiction of Hansen.

Primetime ★★★ (3/5 stars)
Directed by: Lance Oppenheim
Written by: Ajon Singh
Starring: Robert Pattinson, Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Phoebe Bridgers
Running time: 110 mins

The way the camera frames and closes in on Pattinson during that initial interview while his speaking manner ticks up to victory and conquest, is intended to subvert the word “predator.” Yes, the sex offender has fished a child in a predatory way, but this rendering of Hansen implores us to consider him a predator as well, catching the offender as a big trophy. Just to prove the point, when the film winds down to a manhunt for a pivotal suspect, Hansen and his operatives keep referring to the catch as a “whale.”

It’s a gripping portrayal of Hansen, and Pattinson always fills the screen with live-wire intensity, whether he’s trying to unseat Lost in the ratings or evangelizing his belief in the moral mission of To Catch a Predator. “What you’re doing is more than acting,” he tells Daniel “Decoy Dan” Plum — the new actor brought in to portray the child — “You’re saving children.”

Despite Pattinson’s considerable scene-chewing (including one moment of oh-stop-it-already where he retreats to lie on the floor), it’s Skyler Gisondo’s Plum who makes the film. From his in-between vantage point, Gisondo can truly let the audience see inside this chaos. He has to be the adult professional but also to live with the disturbance of having a man wielding a whipped-cream canister expose himself without warning or consent. Gisondo’s eyes and expressions (which were almost as hypnotic among the lower stakes of Licorice Pizza) convey a shock no less authentic for being an adult, not the child the aggressor expects. He is the human center in a cavalcade of brusque, ratings-minded characters who never quite let us in on their emotions. Unlike the others, his role is clear if bruising in the delicate moral dance that joins law enforcement and news media for vigilante justice.

The ensemble is a triumph of A24’s typically inspired stunt-casting. Merritt Wever is great as budget-minded Predator producer Andie Bender, who’s constantly looking around for signals she needs to jump ship. A-list musician Phoebe Bridgers deadpans as Del Harvey the show’s other decoy, telling Plum to be more child-like: “you have to smile so they can hear it in your voice” (She gets a big laugh flatly explaining what the letters on her NIN t-shirt stand for.) Anna Faris’ brief onscreen time as Hansen’s betrayed and disengaged wife makes the most of withering quiet. The Office’s Creed Bratton is downright bloodthirsty as an admirer of Hansen in a brief meeting. NBC’s real-life Jeff Zucker has a blast playing a colder version of himself.

Even the aforementioned perp with his dick (and dessert) in his hand is Jonathan Lipnicki, former child actor of Jerry Maguire fame, who likely has thoughts on child exploitation himself. To top it all off, the crew’s “whale” is Texas assistant DA Bill Conradt, played by Alex Winter — the one who is not Keanu Reeves from Bill and Ted. He makes his mark mostly just staring through the window while we take in his embattled character through a couple of phone calls with Plum and a series of AOL instant messages with Perverted-Justice who seeks to take him in.

Oppenheim (Spermworld, You Can See Everything) takes his trademark amplification of documentary one step further than factual. Matthew Maher captures the wide-eyed Perverted-Justice founder Xavier Von Erck: “holy fuck he couldn’t resist me!” And, as Oppenheim meets the A24 house style, an insane touch comes when Plum sings Rent’s “Seasons of Love” to Conradt before Winter’s character shoots himself in the head.

Ultimately the success of Primetime comes from the details of the chaos. Actors navigate people navigating acting as law enforcement and justice: a mission they were neither trained nor especially suited for. They dive headfirst into the maelstrom of the media-overload aesthetic that psychedelically crosscuts all sorts of stray images into the fray. My favorite ironies include a cop ordering the “Jared special” at Subway named after the chain’s own disgraced-pedophile mascot, or the choose-your-metaphor of a camera sitting underwater at the bottom of a pool in more than one scene, unretrieved. Though it begins close to documentary, the film’s aesthetic borders on horror, a perspective which Pattinson’s lead buys into: “we’re cleansing the world of an ancient evil.”

As with the runaway smash Obsession made by Curry Barker, one of the other new young directors that Hollywood is blooding, Primetime doesn’t examine the ethical ramifications of its characters’ actions. Consequences might bog down a horror pic, but omitting the human and legal puzzles at the core of To Catch a Predator leaves a void. The most reflection we get is a recurring thread about Hansen’s own infidelity being threatened with exposure by the National Enquirer and Bridgers’ Harvey exclaiming that the crew and police encircling Conradt’s house is not right — “they come to us!”

The film does not mean to place Hansen’s indiscretions on the same level as the perverts he catches seeking underage victims, but it clearly means to make his hypocrisy a point. What that point is, though, remains unclear, perhaps it’s to draw a parallel to the inevitable compulsions of men abusing their power. The real-life Hansen has objected to the film (“not sure what the point of it was”) and he’s not totally wrong — if he thinks it lets him off too easy. It would be a lot more powerful to force Pattinson in this guise to face the real, substantial criticism of entrapment or playing judge, jury and, in Conradt’s case, potential executioner.

Oppenheim’s film is still very much worth your prime time even if it sidesteps the cinema’s rare chance to ask what we’re actually supposed to do with all these predators. Instead, the film settles for good-not-greatness by not challenging the characters’ surface coldness. We hear the moral vacuum at the heart of this film when Bender murmurs “I think we can make this work” for the segment after their target blows his own brains out.