Thoughts and Preyers: “Primetime” v “Predators”

In Theaters: Is it worth sitting through an entertaining but morally questionable movie if it has three exceptional performances? I want to say I enjoyed “Primetime” (⭐ ⭐ 1/2), but “enjoy” is the wrong verb here – “squirmed not entirely unpleasantly in my seat” might be more accurate. A fictionalized behind-the-scenes portrait of the mid-2000s reality-news show “To Catch a Predator” – and a dark expose of the show's producer and on-camera judge, jury and executioner Chris Hansen – it’s a merrily exploitive thriller about a disturbingly exploitive TV show, a drama very much in the “Network” vein. And it features Robert Pattinson playing Hansen as an electrifying empty suit, a man so high on his own supply of civic outrage that he can’t see what a fame whore he’s become.

“To Catch a Predator” was a “Dateline: NBC” segment that escaped its pen and went viral in the early adolescence of the Internet era. Using adult decoys who could convincingly play young boys and girls online or over the phone, Hansen lured pedophiles to a suburban house and exposed them to the world before handing them over to the police. Entrapment? Well, sure, but if these creepazoids aren’t asking for it, who is? That was the thinking anyway, and the ratings were strong enough to dispel any thought of news-gathering ethics.

Was “To Catch a Predator” news, though, or was it voyeuristic entertainment in the guise of vigilante justice – raw meat for the masses? As directed by Lance Oppenheim, a documentarian (“Some Kind of Heaven”) making his narrative feature debut, “Primetime” is scurrilously watchable in showing how the show’s mission of “protecting the kids” was a cover for rampant careerism on the part of Hansen and the show’s (fictional) producer Andie Bender, who’s played by the talented Merrit Wever with the gusto of a starving character actor sitting down to a three-course meal. Oppenheim has described Pattinson’s performance as “a cross between Jerry Maguire and Dracula,” which gives you an idea of how much fun the star is having, and, while this isn't a work of high hambone like Pattinson’s Antinous in this summer’s “The Odyssey,” his Hansen is still a juicy, outsized creation – a man who’s acts as if he's always on TV, even when he isn’t.

The third corner of the movie’s calculus is “Decoy Dan,” a 23-year-old actor desperate to get his SAG card who only gradually comes to understand the moral quicksand he’s stepped into. Skylar Gisondo is, like Wever, a face familiar from various movies (he was Jimmy Olsen in last year’s “Superman,” and I treasure him as the rich nerd of 2019’s “Booksmart”) who similarly rises to the challenge of a good part. As Dan sheds his naivete, we see the machine of “To Catch a Predator” rolling on, oblivious to anything but self-righteousness and ratings, even when one of the show’s quarries, an assistant district attorney played by Alex Winter, commits suicide as the cops close in.

Which happened in real life and which “To Catch a Predator” included in its broadcast as a unruffled example of a “criminal making his own choices.” By contrast, “Primetime” portrays the men caught in the show’s net (played by, among others, Tony Revolori of "Grand Budapest Hotel" and Jonathan Lipnicki, the one-time kid from "Jerry Maguire") as both sick men and sad sacks, collapsing in tears as they realize their life is being destroyed by a “Candid Camera” show run amok. Do Oppenheim and his screenwriter Ajon Singh want us to feel sorry for these guys? Or just to see them as damaged human beings rather than monsters to be hung in the public square? A lot of of viewers won’t want to bother splitting those hairs, and the movie lacks the subtlety to encourage them to – it’s more interested in the freak show unfolding behind the camera. Which, as I said, is a lot of ghoulish fun to watch even if you feel the need to take a shower afterwards.

Ironically, a movie already exists that capably dissects the problems built into a show like “To Catch a Predator,” and it’s a documentary. “Predators” (2025, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2, streaming on Paramount+ and Prime Video; for rent on Apple TV and Fandango) uses outtakes from the series, interviews with people like the real “Decoy Dan,” YouTube Hansen copycats and Hansen himself, plus a patient, steady gaze to pin the show to its own contradictions. At a certain point, director David Osit reveals that he himself was a victim of sexual abuse as a child, and his great frustration with "To Catch a Predator" is that he came to it as an adolescent desperately wanting to understand what drives people like his abuser, while the show, despite Hansen’s constant on-camera claims to the contrary, has no interest in understanding whatsoever. (Indeed, the host sees it as a weakness.) That still may be too much sympathy for the devil for many viewers to countenance, but “Predators” is still a far more nuanced take on a difficult subject than “To Catch a Predator” or “Primetime.”

On the other hand, “Primetime” has Robert Pattinson in one of his most charismatic performances to date, which almost makes up for the movie’s sketchy sense of principles. (Rounding out the cast is singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers as another decoy and onetime-NBC head Jeff Zucker playing himself.) And in its qualified defense, the movie is directed with flair by a documentarian clearly delighted to play in the fields of narrative semi-fiction. Using camerawork that blurs the lines between video footage and reality, Oppenheim is a stylist at heart, which works to his movie’s short-term benefit as a cinematic ride – and its long-term loss as a work of any great weight or meaning.

(The real Chris Hansen, by the way, has taken his act to YouTube, where it remains immensely popular; he is very much unamused by the new film, but, like a good media lamprey, he recognizes a promotional opportunity when one presents itself and is placing ads for his show before theatrical screenings of “Primetime.”)

Classics Corner: One of my favorite writers on old Hollywood – and one of my favorite people, period – is film critic Farran Nehme, who goes by the nom du cineaste Self-Styled Siren. Her Substack newsletter is a necessary destination for old-movie junkies (of which I am one) and in her most recent post, Farran goes long on “Letty Lynton” (1932, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2), a Pre-Code Joan Crawford melodrama notable for A) being a “lost film” for 90 years due to copyright absurdities (which didn’t stop prints looking like “pigeon poop” – the Siren’s words, not mine – turning up on the Internet) and B) featuring a poufy gown designed by MGM’s in-house couturier Adrian that, depending on which story you believe, sold half a million or 50,000 knock-off copies at Macy’s. The restored “Letty Lynton” is getting a specialized theatrical roadshow and is available at last on blu-ray, and if it comes to your neck of the woods, give it a go. Per Nehme, it's one of the first movies "when you start to see all of Joan Crawford’s talent at once—her wit, her ease with her body, her amazing beauty, her emotional clarity. She was already a star, but here she becomes singular and legendary."

One Hell of a Character

An afternoon with Letty Lynton and 500 Joan Crawford fans

Self-Styled SirenSelf-Styled Siren

Here's a snippet of the film featuring Crawford and co-star Robert Montgomery (who's probably best known to Boomers as the father of Elizabeth "Bewitched" Montgomery").

On Demand: "Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma" (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐) has hit Amazon, apple TV and Fandango at the rental price (for now) of $19.99, which still strikes me as worth the price of admission for one of the year's most challenging movies. (It comes to MUBI on October 2, if you have a subscription to that worthy service.)

(The song heard in the trailer, by the way, features the voice of Paul Buchanan, the singer/spiritual force behind The Blue Nile, which with four hauntingly beautiful albums released over 20 years (1984 - 2004) remains one of the more mysterious groups in pop music history. "Teenage Sex and Death" sent me back down the memory hole of my love for the band, and of course I had to make a playlist, which I now share with you:

(A Tidal version is here.)

Also arriving on demand at premium rental prices in the same places is "Tony" (⭐ ⭐ 1/2) a.k.a. "The Sorrows of Young Anthony Bourdain." It's very watchable, even if I'm unconvinced that star Dominic Sessa is fully ready for primetime. (Others disagree.)

Last Chance Dept.: "Bigger Than Life" (1956, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2) is leaving The Criterion Channel on September 30, and since it's not available for streaming anywhere else, I'd grab it while you can for a career-peak performance from James Mason as an all-American schoolteacher who becomes addicted to cortisone. Directed by Nicholas Ray with a sense of barely suppressed emotional hysteria, it's an indictment of lockstep 1950's conformity, a warning against the patriarchal monster in the house, and a melodrama of 'roid rage way ahead of schedule.

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