What happens when the pursuit of justice becomes inseparable from the pursuit of an audience, or rather, the pursuit of a spectacle?
“Primetime,” directed by Lance Oppenheim, offers not only a glimpse into the cutthroat nature of network television but also an unsettling examination of the ego, ambition and moral compass behind one of its most infamous personalities: Chris Hansen.
Darkly funny, visually audacious and anchored by a magnetic performance from Robert Pattin son, the film’s greatest achievement is making Hansen’s charisma as captivating as it is repulsive.
Set in 2006, the A24 thriller stars Pattinson as the host of NBC’s “To Catch a Predator,” a program that confronted adults suspected of pursuing minors online. A coveted primetime slot intensifies Hansen’s hunger for recognition.
“I’m gonna be bigger than ‘Lost!’” he exclaims at one point. It’s an absurdly funny declaration: a supposed crusade for justice is now competing with scripted entertainment.
Pattinson is wonderfully slimy, portraying Hansen with self-assurance, desperation and barely concealed vanity. He delivers each accusation as though waiting for applause, transforming the journalist’s familiar one-liners into something resembling a personal brand.
Oppenheim described Pattin son’s interpretation as a collision of “Jerry Maguire and Dracula.” The comparison captures Han sen’s relentless self-promotion and his apparent need to feed off other people’s humiliation. Beneath the polished television persona is someone frightened by the prospect of irrelevance.
Yet Hansen’s convictions need not be insincere. Believing in the importance of his work may be precisely what prevents him from recognizing how exploitative his methods have become.
Skyler Gisondo offers an excellent counterpoint as Dan Plum, an aspiring actor hired as an undercover decoy. Dan’s imitation of Hansen reveals how easily moral authority becomes performance.
“You’re cleansing the world of an ancient evil,” Hansen tells him. What sounds like encouragement also cloaks the emotional toll of Dan’s work in the language of heroism.
Gisondo explained in an interview that he practiced imitating Pattinson’s version of Hansen rather than the real journalist. The detail is almost too perfect: the imitation of an imitation becomes its own personality.
Oppenheim extends that artificiality into the cinematography throughout the film. Close-ups crowd Hansen’s face, while unstable colors and degraded textures transform ordinary suburban rooms into something resembling a fever dream.
Cinematographer David Bolen revealed that the production used vintage broadcast cameras and transferred digital footage onto 16-millimeter film for added grain.
It’s an inspired contradiction: a fictional account borrows documentary techniques to reveal how supposedly authentic television is manufactured.
That contradiction becomes particularly consequential during the film’s dramatization of the Bill Conradt investigation, whose tragic outcome exposes the human consequences of sensationalist television.
The sequence is especially effective because it forces the distinction between documenting events and influencing them into uncomfortable focus.
However, the film’s greatest weakness emerges from the same fascination that makes it so compelling: Hansen himself. Pattinson commands so much attention that the broader institutional pressures enabling sensationalist television become secondary. The spectacle’s machinery deserves just as much scrutiny as its star.
Nevertheless, “Primetime” succeeds as an unnerving and darkly funny character study, elevated by Pattinson’s magnetic performance and Oppenheim’s feverish direction. Its most uncomfortable observation is that moral outrage and entertainment need not compete. In the hands of a charismatic television personality, righteousness becomes part of the product being sold.
