Robert Pattinson Wants to Catch a Predator in 'Primetime'
By Natalie McCarty
Robert Pattinson makes a good vigilante. We learned that in The Batman. In Primetime, he gets to play another one, or, more accurately, a journalist who has convinced himself he’s one.
Courtesy of A24
Chris Hansen isn’t exactly a vigilante, though. In my opinion, he’s a performative journalist, a pretend activist feeding off his own ambition, self-righteousness, and performance as he climbs the ladder. He wants the primetime slot and solid ratings. He wants to be the only guy capable of catching the monsters. And, more than anything, he wants to be the hero.
Courtesy of A24
Pattinson is brilliant in this. It’s a gorgeous performance, and something only Rob could have done. He takes Hansen and turns him into this strange, larger-than-life version of a television icon, completely convinced that he is doing the right thing while becoming increasingly consumed by the spectacle of it all. It’s a bit of a serious caricature; however, that's possible.
Skyler Gisondo is also great. He’s the perfect “decoy Dan,” and somehow manages to make the whole thing feel even more ridiculous and uncomfortable, but also substantially more real. Merritt Wever, my beloved, is a fantastic choice for the producer too. She is the grounding force of the film and is essential to the balance of acts here.
Courtesy of A24
Primetime is strange, dark, and grimy, but also funny and human. It’s a fever dream of 2006 television, right at the edge of the world we live in now. Reminds me of the piece: Is reality TV the modern gladiator?
I love that Lance Oppenheim doesn’t make a conventional biopic here and is far less interested in telling us who Chris Hansen was than in playing with the character Chris Hansen became. The whole world of To Catch a Predator was already bizarre and disturbing. It was journalism and entertainment and morality play and public spectacle all at once.
And Hansen is the perfect person to put at the center of that scene because he genuinely seems to believe in the fantasy. He wants good and evil to be simple. The predator and the innocent. The hunter and the prey.
Courtesy of A24
But the more he performs that role, the more the role becomes him.
Hansen isn't necessarily a monster in this, but he also isn’t not one. Primetime shows how easily righteousness can become its own kind of performance. He starts convinced he’s building a show about justice and ends up trapped inside the facade he created to sell it.
Does hypocrisy and greed not make a monster of us all? Does desire really lead to our ruin?
In Primetime, it sure does.
