JONESING FOR FILMS

I’ve never been all that interested in investigative journalism shows like Dateline or 20/20 or 60 Minutes. And outside of a brief period in the mid-2000s, I’ve also never really gotten into reality television. Right around that time was when To Catch a Predator aired on NBC, which seemed to find an audience by combining the investigative journalism with a “gotcha” sensationalism of a reality show. Primetime takes us behind the camera of the show’s meteoric rise and dramatic collapse.

To Catch a Predator started as a segment of Dateline, I believe, and eventually grew into its own show, which was hosted by Chris Hansen. In Primetime, Hansen is portrayed with uncanny precision by Robert Pattinson, confronting would-be sexual predators in a sting operation with a vigilante group, Perverted-Justice, and in conjunction with local authorities. Adults from the group would pose online as underage teens and lure the predators in and expose them on national television for the world to see.

Pattinson’s Chris Hansen is the face of the show, but the person behind the scenes making everything work is producer Andie Bender (Merritt Weaver). While at times combative, they are mostly on the same page when it comes to aggressively pursuing justice and ratings, and it is unclear whether one of those is more important than the other. As the ratings climb for the show, a young actor, Dan Plum (Skylar Gisondo), comes on board to act in the sting operations as one of their decoys.

The biggest selling point of this film is the acting. As I said, Pattinson’s performance as Chris Hansen is riveting in how spot on it is. Apparently he struggled getting the voice down, but you would not know it from watching him. His Hansen comes across as someone who feels like he has something to prove, like he’s been slighted in some way by his industry and isn’t considered a peer in the industry, like when he runs into Stone Phillips, host of Dateline, at the network. His inferiority complex pushes him to push the envelope, especially when the head of the NBC network, Jeff Zucker (playing himself), wants to put his show head-to-head with the ratings juggernaut Lost on ABC.

The pressure of a primo spot in primetime begins to cause some friction between Hansen and Weaver’s Andie where there had previously been none. Her character’s journey is one of having her loyalties tested; whether it makes sense to jump ship or keep her hand on the wheel and steer the ship through the rough seas ahead with an increasingly erratic captain leading the crew.

Gisondo’s Dan is initially confused about his role, then energized by it and defensive about it, before he eventually starts to become conflicted about it. His goals and aspirations and whether the work is ultimately worth it is left hanging for the viewer to decide.

Outside of the acting, particularly the three main performances, I found Primetime to be rather messy and muddled in what it is trying to say. It’s very difficult to make a movie about catching would-be pedophiles and making their capture and exposure exploitative, but that seems to be the attempt here. I think it also tries to frame this mid-2000s show as a precursor for where we have gone as a society in the past 20-ish years and what this show has to say about the present.

Though certainly not excusing the behavior of the predators, the film does try to call into question the practice of using them for our viewing pleasure as television consumers. It seems like the movie wants to hold a mirror up to sensationalists like Hansen, who is far from a boy scout in his personal life, and the vigilante group engaging in what might be entrapment, but also maybe the audience for soaking up this content as entertainment. Its effectiveness at holding up that mirror is done with varying degrees of effectiveness.

The timeline of events is also confusing and muddled. Between being on Dateline and having its own timeslot, the show aired from 2004-2007, but the time depicted in the movie is incredibly condensed and it is unclear from watching it if the show is already it own thing separate from Dateline and being moved to a new timeslot or being spun off into its own show when they meet with Zucker. Given it is a movie, it is hard to condense three years into less than two hours, so they likely went with the film being loosely based on real-life events and kept the timeline purposefully vague.

Primetime has a message it wants to deliver about the pursuit of ratings at any cost and the culpability of the audience that ate it up, but its message is muddled. However, the performances of Pattinson, Weaver, and Gisondo alone are almost enough to recommend this film.