Robert Pattinson stars as Chris Hansen in Lance Oppenheim’s ‘Primetime’ (Photo: A24)
Summary
I can’t tell if Lance Oppenheim is trying to be clever with Chris Hansen, but I am convinced this film is broken, concealing the very conversation the director wanted to have.
Chris Hansen’s To Catch a Predator is the reason why there are so many child predator hunters on YouTube today. Skeet Jean is my favourite: an American YouTuber who is a professional Chris Hansen impersonator, using his impersonation to plan sting operations to bring down real predators. There’s no denying that this genre of documentary is entertaining – why would it not be? This brings me to Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime, an A24 feature that follows a period in Chris Hansen’s life, inspired by controversial events in 2006. It is a film that surprisingly bores viewers for long stretches and did not have me convinced of the project.
Primetime highlights a perverse interpretation of Chris Hansen: an opportunistic, flawed, and strange man whose only apparent job is to show up at the sting house, shock the child predator once the decoy departs, and repeat a few sickening lines that the predator said to the child to catch them off guard before the police entertainingly arrest them. Robert Pattinson (The Odyssey, The Batman), who plays Hansen, goes all-in on this interpretation, showcasing an edgy performance. Whether this is an accurate interpretation of the television host attempting to be famous, I could not tell you. Pattinson holds himself well in the sting house scenes, which many will be familiar with in real life, but the personality of Hansen when the cameras are off? That’s what I have doubts about. It could well be that Pattinson chose a personality of his own liking and ran with it to achieve Oppenheim’s vision.
Primetime pushes an ideology through an unnecessarily distorted approach: that entertainment is the crux when it comes to true crime ventures. Hansen did not care about the paedophiles in our neighbourhood – why would he? He wanted to ensure they had better ratings than LOST on NBC. The production team cared little about the traumatic impact on the decoys – why would they? Their ultimate goal was to fool the predator. The police did not really believe they could wipe out all predators on the streets – how could they? They just wanted to look good to achieve their political visions.
The problem is, when the film combines all these propositions, Oppenheim chooses style over precision. The exposition of all the details feels deliberately messy, presumably because the director has created a hit piece in the shape of an arthouse A24 film, trying to cleverly and artistically encourage the audience to assume that this feature is merely an “inspired story,” not a fictionalised recounting of real events.
Andie Bender, Hansen’s producer, played by Merritt Wever (Tiny Beautiful Things, Unbelievable), is an ironic highlight of the film, considering this is meant to be a Pattinson vehicle. Wever surfaces a supporting character in a far clearer manner: a producer stuck in a moral quandary over her career and life. The same goes for the other supporting actor, Skyler Gisondo (The Resort, The Binge), who plays Daniel “Dan” Plum, a decoy for the sting operations who aspires to be an actor, also conflicted by his life choices while being taken under Hansen’s wing.
Primetime softly reminds me of The Social Reckoning, which had similar problems. The lead character, Mark Zuckerberg, played by Succession’s Jeremy Strong, was a great performance. It was a caricature of Zuckerberg – the kind of performance that the social media mogul would be angry at – but in the case of that film, director Aaron Sorkin could not distinguish the purpose of his direction from Strong’s performance, which ultimately was the only highlight. Primetime is the same; the only difference is that the director feels like he’s concealing rather than revealing its true purpose.
It’s apparent that everything in the film makes sense apart from Chris Hansen himself, which is a significant problem considering he’s the main subject matter. What Primetime really offers is a Robert Pattinson acting montage piled with senseless, whispery dialogue, finally leading to a dramatic final act where we arrive at the controversial events of 2006, with the suicide of District Attorney Bill Conradt. The final act is designed to be shocking, but Oppenheim sucked out all anticipation by confounding viewers with nonsense exposition leading up to it. It’s hard to be interested in a premise like this when all the director is interested in is showing off his trippy design.
The objective of Primetime cannot be determined because the director decides to obscure it with style. I found it oddly boring and disconnected. It runs under two hours, but it feels painfully longer. While I’ll never shy away from enjoying a Pattinson performance, I can only sustain his acting skills for so long when the film feels broken. I suppose, ironically, the director is opportunistic himself: using events from 2006 and calling the story “inspired” so he does not have to really commit and own up to the character assassination. Primetime is broken and is in no way the film it’s meant to be.
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