Review: ‘Primetime’ Loses Sight of What Chris Hansen Exposed

Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime is a stylish, unnerving look at the machinery behind To Catch a Predator, the NBC phenomenon that turned online sting operations into some of the most talked-about television of the 2000s. It also makes a deliberate choice: rather than linger on the men who believed they were arranging sexual encounters with children, it puts Chris Hansen himself under its harshest spotlight. Primetime | Official Trailer HD | A24 Obviously a movie about a hit television program doesn’t need to become a tribute, and Robert Pattinson’s Hansen is clearly meant to be a man whose need for recognition has become inseparable from his public mission. But Primetime becomes less persuasive when its fascination with Hansen’s ego and ambition turns into a moral inversion, one that risks making the man who exposed the danger seem more villainous than the danger itself. Skyler Gisondo plays Dan Plumb, a young actor who sees a job as a decoy on To Catch a Predator as a real break. Alone in a cheap motel room, he marvels at the modest perks of an all-expenses-paid trip: two beds, a coffee maker, sugar packets. He’s studied adolescent speech, rehearsed the part of a young boy, and convin...