No wonder Chris Hansen is furious…
film review
PRIMETIME
Running time: 110 minutes. Rated R (disturbing inappropriate materials, graphic nudity, some violent content, and language). In theaters Sept. 25.
Should Chris Hansen ever watch the trippy film “Primetime,” about the rise and fall of his “Dateline NBC” collection “To Catch a Predator” during the mid-aughts, I doubt he’ll be any less miffed by the end than he reportedly has been in the weeks since the trailer dropped.
Master of disguise Robert Pattinson performs the host, who turned confronting and locking up pervs into TV popcorn leisure, as ruthlessly formidable and freakishly intense. A snarling creature more so than a human, right here he’s envisioned as the Gollum of community news. “To Catch a Predator,” his “precious.”
This extremely fictionalized, borderline disturbed model of Hansen is a crusader on two fronts.
On one aspect benevolent, he totally believes that trapping and publicly shaming pedophiles is his sacred obligation.
“We’re cleansing the world of an ancient evil,” the character says with the quiet ferocity of a tiger.
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Many people will strongly agree with that level of view, albeit in less grandiose phrases.
Selfishly, he is also preventing for fame.
Hansen’s inside battle echoes the chief contradiction of “To Catch a Predator” that has generated debate for 20 years — that it’s both good and unhealthy.
Yes, its strategies have been ethically fraught (a newsman with rankings on the mind taking an overactive position in police work, producers strapping cameras to cops for action-packed photographs, and many others.), traumatic for its younger actor “decoys” and often harmful to all. But, hey, it introduced pedos to justice, didn’t it?
Robert Pattinson performs Chris Hansen in “Primetime.” A24 via AP
Television host Chris Hansen visits Build to talk about “Crime Watch Daily” at Build Studio in NYC on May 9, 2017. FilmMagic
Beyond the core mission, Pattinson’s extraordinarily unlikable Chris is a narcissist with a chip on his shoulder who envies the perch and reputation of his patronizing “Dateline” colleague Stone Phillips. Stone will get to report from Iraq and Afghanistan — not Fort Myers cul-de-sacs. Hansen wishes that degree of energy as nicely, and it’s finally beginning to come to him.
In an early scene, NBC CEO Jeff Zucker (who, in a weird transfer, performs himself) offers the show a coveted 9 p.m. Wednesday time slot.
“I don’t really understand your show. I don’t like it. I don’t believe in it. But America loves it,” the real Zucker says, clearly longing for the highlight as a lot as the main character does.
Hansen runs home and wakes up his younger youngsters in the center of the evening to inform them, “They’re gonna put me on primetime!” They don’t appear to care. Even his youngsters underestimate him.
So he’ll go to dangerous extremes to keep and grow the surprising rankings increase of “To Catch a Predator” at any price.
The movie depicts the rise and fall of the favored “Dateline NBC” collection. A24 via AP
Hansen tells his producer Andie (Merritt Wever): “I need to do something big — bigger than ‘Lost.’ ”
What he does ends in a death — the suicide of one of the sickos, which was reprehensibly turned into an episode — and the ensuing cancellation of this system.
Directed by Lance Oppenheim, “Primetime” is not a routine biopic that offers a literal rundown of occasions, but moderately a moody funhouse nightmare for its two main topics: Hansen and Dan (Skyler Gisondo) the “decoy,” a budding musical-theater actor who takes the “Predator” job to get his SAG card.
Dan Plum, a gifted improviser who can convincingly play a boy, turns into the MVP of “Predator,” and Gisondo, who’s most well-known for the “Spider-Man” motion pictures, is the MVP of “Primetime.” He softly captures Dan’s suburban naivete and good intentions while never dropping sight of his big-city dream of being a real working actor.
Hansen is pushed as a lot by exposing pervs as he is by his pursuit of fame. A24
Chris Hansen in “To Catch a Predator.” TRUE CRIME NEWS/ YOUTUBE
Andie, with the manipulative ways of a actuality TV producer, feeds Dan’s fragile ego by telling him how great he is. Having never heard that before, he’s intoxicated by the reward and commits totally to the trigger. Until a life-changing event when he can’t anymore.
The real decoy I assume Dan is based on, Dan Schrack, has spoken about his regrets in current years.
“You could offer me $10 million to film that episode in Texas again, and I wouldn’t take it,” Schrack said in the 2025 documentary “Predators.”
That painful battle is always current in Gisondo’s unhappy eyes.
Director Lance Oppenheim’s film is more surreal than your average biopic Courtesy Everett Collection
Wever’s facilitator is not so sympathetic. She is masterfully spiderlike as Andie, who sees her sole job as operating the most profitable business attainable. She’s a Lady Macbeth, coaxing, conniving and competing to get precisely what she desires. That the episode works is more important to her than a prison being put away.
That consequences-be-damned dedication leads to the heartpounding climactic scene, which Oppenheim has staged as a front-lawn battle zone.
A word on nightmares: Within minutes of waking up in a cold sweat, you often overlook you ever had one. Similarly, Oppenheim’s film is haunting, riveting, humorous in spots and visually arresting. But it doesn’t stick with you fairly as forcefully as the doc “Predators” does. The film is a centered character examine moderately than a resonant expression of an thought.
“Primetime” isn’t type to the host. A24
“Primetime” comes down arduous on Hansen, no doubt about it. Gung-ho Pattinson explodes as the host’s life falls aside and he descends into insanity. However, it’s more of a good time than a profound one.
I puzzled if that was Oppenheim’s intention all along: If “To Catch a Predator” might flip prison justice into sensationalized leisure for the lots, then why can’t I do the same factor with Hansen?
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