PRIMETIME

Review by John Larkin

It is both ironic and unfortunate that the weakest aspect of PRIMETIME, Lance Oppenheim’s dramatization of Chris Hansen and TO CATCH A PREDATOR at the height of the show’s popularity, is Robert Pattinson’s central performance. His portrayal feels more like self-conscious mimicry than a confident, convincing characterization. There are echoes of Kirk Douglas’s ruthless newspaper reporter Chuck Tatum in Billy Wilder’s ACE IN THE HOLE (1951), particularly in the character’s ambition and appetite for spectacle, but Pattinson too often tips into outright lampooning.

That is particularly frustrating because Oppenheim gets so many other things right. Setting aside the film’s embellishments of actual events, there is much to admire, including the casting of Skyler Gisondo and Merritt Wever, who deliver performances that rank among the year’s best. Their authenticity makes the exaggerations in Pattinson’s portrayal all the more distracting.

I was especially struck by Wever as Andie Bender, an exhausted television producer weighing whether to abandon the increasingly frantic and unhinged Hansen. Her performance makes that internal struggle visible as Andie considers jumping ship to ABC’s WHAT WOULD YOU DO?, a hidden-camera series built around staged moral dilemmas and its own brand of “gotcha!” television. Wever conveys the weariness of someone who understands the machinery of the business but is beginning to question whether she wants to keep working alongside this particular man.

Oppenheim is doing two things at once: portraying Hansen through an almost mocking lens shaped by his status as an internet meme, while telling a more grounded story through Gisondo’s Dan Plumb. An aspiring actor hired to work as a decoy, Dan embraces the job as an opportunity to step into the spotlight. His eagerness for recognition provides an interesting parallel to Hansen’s determination to hold on to his own.

Another supporting turn that surprised me was Alex Winter’s as Bill Conradt, the suspected predator who becomes Hansen’s “white whale.” He embodies someone so far removed from the aloof Bill Preston of BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE (1989) that the contrast is startling. The always brilliant Anna Faris, meanwhile, is curiously underused as Hansen’s wife, appearing in a single scene that feels barely a minute long. It is an odd use of an actress capable of contributing considerably more.

Pattinson’s portrayal, however, remains the film’s most glaring weakness. It distracts from Oppenheim’s considerable command of style, pacing and tension, all of which help shape a compelling story about a man driven to succeed on television. There is an absorbing film here, with some exceptional performances around its edges, but the one at its center repeatedly kept me at a distance.