Review: 'Primetime' aims to explore good and evil in TV news but can't find the answers so easily, even with Robert Pattinson's fascinating performance

In the video-age journalism thriller “Primetime,” director Lance Oppenheim uses the former NBC News series “To Catch a Predator” to serve as a vessel carrying the emotional weight of people trying to convince themselves they’re working together to stop evil — but the vessel is a leaky one, and doesn’t deal with the uncomfortable answers to the questions it’s raising.

Oppenheim starts the story in 2007, when the formula for “To Catch a Predator” is well established. A suspect — like the ex-Marine (played by Tony Revolori) we meet on the first “sting” — gets into an online chat with someone he’s told is underage, but in reality is Xavier von Erck (played by Michael Maher), who runs an online anti-trafficking group called Perverted-Justice. Von Erck is working with the show’s producers, and giving the chatroom transcripts to host Chris Hansen, played by Robert Pattinson.

The “sting” invariably ends with the suspect being asked to come to a house in the suburbs. There, a decoy — like Dee, played by the musician Phoebe Bridgers — asks the man inside and then tells him to wait while she changes in the next room. That’s when Hansen comes in, delivers his trademark, “Why don’t you take a seat?,” and asks the guy what he’s doing there. Then the TV crew is revealed, and the law enforcement outside waiting to arrest him.

Hansen, first-time writer Ajon Singh’s script notes, won journalism awards for his past work, particularly about child trafficking in India. But the “To Catch a Predator” busts give him something else: Fame, and a thirst to boost NBC’s ratings. When the studio chief (former NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Zucker, essentially playing himself) tells Hansen and his producer, Andie Bender (Merritt Wever), that he’s going to move “To Catch a Predator” to the time slot held by TV’s most popular show, ABC’s “Lost,” Hansen sees an opening to the big time, in prime time.

The pressure mounts on Hansen from several directions. In addition to the network rivalry with anchor Stone Philips, Hansen is juggling a faltering marriage (his wife is played by Anna Faris) and an affair with a 30-year-old woman that’s gotten the attention of the National Enquirer. Hansen is convinced all he needs is to land “a whale” on the show, and a tip from von Erck about a prosecutor (Alex Winter) in Texas might be the big score the show needs.

Hansen’s battles with fame and journalistic ethics is one of three moral battles in Singh’s script. Another is Bender’s, as she contemplates leaving NBC for an offer to produce a “Predator”-lite news show on ABC, one that’s more about feel-good stories than busting pathetic men. (Bender, it should be noted, is a composite character.)

The third person wrestling with his conscience is Dan Plum (played by “Superman” sidekick Skyler Gisondo), an idealistic young actor who auditions for “To Catch a Predator” and is quickly hired to be the show’s newest decoy. At first, Dan thinks of it as an improv exercise, and a chance to get a Screen Actors Guild card. Once he encounters Hansen’s magnetic charm, though, Dan’s moral compass takes a few spins. 

Oppenheim is an acclaimed documentary filmmaker — his collaboration with Nathan Fielder about fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, “You Can See Everything,” wowed critics at the fall festivals and hits theaters in October — so it’s unsettling, from a journalism standpoint, to see how he and Singh condense and truncate events for dramatic effect. (For example, the National Enquirer story landed in 2011, not in 2007.) The most authentic thing in the movie is cinematographer David Bolen’s grainy, mid-aughts video resolution, which looks like it was copied off of a VHS tape.

Oppenheim doesn’t contend with one of the failings of Hansen and “To Catch a Predator,” which is that some prosecutors never pursued charges against the men Hansen exposed on TV. (Watch David Osit’s 2025 documentary “Predators” for a more nuanced exploration of that and other issues around the show.) Instead, with a flinty and fascinating performance by Pattinson, “Primetime” aims to portray Hansen as a man claiming he’s battling evil through his TV show — but in the end showing him saying whatever he needs to say in the moment to keep his crusader image alive. 

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‘Primetime’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 25, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for disturbing sexual material, graphic nudity, some violent content, and language. Running time: 110 minutes.