Director Lance Oppenheim dramatizes the rise and fall of Dateline NBC’s To Catch a Predator with Robert Pattinson disappearing in the role of Chris Hansen and Merritt Wever delivering a career best performance.
PRIMETIME (2026)
★★★ & 1/2 ★ of ★★★★★ stars
If you were watching TV in the mid 2000’s, reality television was in its inception and there was something about NBC’s To Catch A Predator that hooked you in with its darkest timeline schaudenfreude. Dateline NBC’s Chris Hansen hosted this special where he partenered with a “watchdog” online group called Perverted Justice that lured would-be child predators to a home promising the pedos-to-be a night with an underage child. As the perpetrator arrived with condoms, pizza or sometimes both, Hansen would pop out with a transcript of the individual’s online chat to expose them as a loser and monster and then escort them out to be promptly arrested. Making something that dark an entertainment spectacle was whatmade the show such a draw, to the point where they’d do specials based in certain areas like the Jersey Shore to find even more scandalous losers. This ultimately culminated with Perverted Justice luring a Texas district attorney into their orbit – an incident which ultimately led to the end of the show and is dramatized in this film Primetime directed by Oppenheim. Oppenheim, who is also behind the upcoming “You Can See Everything” documentary on Elizabeth Holmes, is uniquely skilled to create this docu-drama and it works as the same sort of spectacle Predator was to an insane degree.
Robert Pattinson stars as Hansen, an Emmy winning reporter who finds himself transfixed in elevating Predator inside NBC and growing his own profile. He’s disconnected from his wife and kids and sees success in his field as his only way forward as he and fellow NBC anchor Stone Phillips carry an unspoken rivalry based on their collective unease. The flavor of Nathan Fielder comedy permeates this film and he is thanked in the comments by Oppenheim. It has this Anchorman meets The Curse vibe that really sucks you in. Merritt Wever is his dedicated producer Andy and while many will comment on Pattinson losing himself in the role of Hansen, its Wever whose acting grounds this weird nefarious reality. She is dedicated to growing the show and when she has doubts that Hansen values the show more than her, she comes to realize she also loves this show more than anyone. It’s bizaree scenario aside, the darkness in bringing these perpetartors of an “ancient evil” to light is what attracts her to it. They’re both moths drawn to a dark flame and they want it to grow. At the opposiye is Skylar Gisondo’s Dan, a would-be actor who is playing one of the actors that is bait for the predators to talk to before they are busted. Gisondo and Phoebe Bridgers both play these bait actors and we meet Bridgers at the end of her rope while Gisondo is still optimistic and seeing how the show saps them of their hope and dreams in analogous to the predators themselves. Oppenheim gives many of these predator actors disabilities so you can see how they’re outside society, but not so much to make them likeable; not unlike Hansen. Hansen is mission-driven, but he’s also deeply flawed, a familyman who doesn’t love his family, an avenger who doesn’t care what he’s avenging. That’s where Primetime works, everyone is in the dark, some just think they’re exposing it while they swim in its emptiness.
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VIDEO REVIEW