CAST: Robert Pattinson, Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Phoebe Bridgers. Directed by Lance Oppenheim.
REVIEW: A sly look at ambition, ego and losing one’s self to the dark side of a job, “Primetime” is a slice of arthouse drama that wonders where entertainment ends and responsibility begins.
Based on the 2007 Esquire magazine article “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die” by Luke Dittrich, “Primetime” sees Robert Pattinson play television journalist Chris Hansen, host of “To Catch a Predator.” The hidden-camera show that saw Hansen unmask child predators by confronting adult men who sought to meet underage girls for sex. “Do you watch television? Well, there’s something you should know. I’m Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC. And you’re about to be a part of television history.”
The controversial show is accused of vigilantism, manipulation and of entrapping its subjects, but nonetheless, is a ratings hit but the ambitious Hansen wants more. “I want something that matters,” he says. “No more bottom feeders. I want a whale.”
To dethrone prime time juggernaut “Lost,” Hansen, working with the Murphy, Texas police department, arranges a sting of a prominent local official with disastrous results. “We’re gonna be bigger than Lost!” Hansen brays, unaware that his quest for ratings at any cost will place him in the uncomfortable position of being at the center of a story.
Director Lance Oppenheim, working from a script by Ajon Singh, takes an arthouse approach to the story. The story of “To Catch a Predator” is, of course, the film’s core, but the filmmaker is more concerned with blurring the line between reality and performance.
Hansen and the decoys, hired to lure predators, perform, rehearsing their lines in advance, and, in the film’s first recreated sting, Hansen enters the scene, flamboyantly whipping aside a curtain to great dramatic effect.
Pattinson hits a career high here, handing in a heightened performance that captures Hansen’s grandiosity without turning him into a caricature. It’s strange work, marked by odd facial expressions and movements, as though his inner thoughts are manifested outwardly. It’s weirdly affecting, both cartoonish and sinister. His voice and practiced cadence evoke Hansen, but it is the off-kilter body language that grabs the character’s spirit.
Despite Pattinson’s Oscar worthy work, and some nice turns from Merritt Wever as Hansen’s “I don’t do feel good” producer and Skyler Gisondo as the aspiring actor hired to be a decoy in their show’s stings, and the stunt casting of Jeff Zucker, who portrays himself at the time when he oversaw programming at NBCUniversal, “Primetime” doesn’t dig deep. It’s a well-performed television satire but it doesn’t offer much insight into Hensen or the audience’s collective thirst for judgement.
