#352: Primetime

Release Date: September 25th, 2026

Format: DCP (Cinemark at The Pike Outlets in Long Beach, CA)

Written by: Ajon Singh

Directed by: Lance Oppenheim

3.5 Stars

Based on journalist Luke Dittrich’s tremendous Esquire article, “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die,” (what a title!) Primetime unearths the craven machinations of one of television’s all-time most notorious and popular shows, To Catch a Predator.

If you’re unfamiliar, To Catch a Predator was a Dateline spin-off “reality” show in the ‘00s about undercover agents - posing as young teenagers - that would go online and entice child sexual predators into sexually explicit conversations. Once the hook was set and the predator began sharing incriminating personal details and sexual motives, the undercover op would then invite the predator to hookup in a suburban home, which was in fact a sting operation with a dozen NBC cameras and local law enforcement who would publicly shame the criminal before leading them off to jail. 

Also waiting at the bait house, of course, was the show’s star, Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson). It’s Hansen, as portrayed in Pattinson’s electrifying performance, that is the most compelling element of Primetime. Pattinson plays him as a loser, really, a modestly handsome but mostly uninteresting careerist in a boxy sports coat. Screenwriter Ajon Singh depicts him as a company man first and foremost, singularly focused on how to further drive To Catch a Predator’s surging popularity. The show’s complicated ethics and supposed sense of justice are more of an afterthought for Chris Hanson. Instead, ratings are king, as well as the careful curation of his on-screen good guy persona (never mind the contrast to his personal life, which is unraveling in the midst of a public affair with a younger woman).

Not only does Mr. Hanson want to be seen as a more legitimate journalist than Dateline’s primary anchor, Stone Phillips, but he also wants to beat ABC’s #1 show, Lost, in the ratings. He’ll do nearly anything to achieve these ends, including taking To Catch a Predator on the road to a rural Texas town and obtaining a search warrant for the home of assistant district attorney Bill Conradt, a gay man who engaged in sexually explicit talk with To Catch a Predator’s online operatives, but never went so far as to meet up in real life. 

When the local yokel Texas cops finally bust the door down on Bill Conradt’s home, he shoots himself in the head.

Much of the film’s moral philosophizing, thankfully, is left as subtext. The film never explicitly tampers with how we should feel about the commercialization of child sexual abuse or the legacy of the suicide of Bill Conradt. Was Bill Conradt, by all accounts a good man, engaging in what he thought was online sexual role-playing with another adult? Did he pull the plug when his online indiscretions took a turn to a real-life meet-up? That’s possible. Or was Bill Conradt a potentially dangerous sexual predator? That’s possible too (although no explicit child pornography or evidence of pedophilia turned up as a result of that infamous To Catch a Predator search warrant).

Director Lance Oppenheim never quite captures the brilliance of Primetime’s source material, that Luke Dittrich Esquire article, but he does some interesting things nonetheless. If you remember To Catch a Predator, it was a pretty low-rent looking production, with cheap looking bait houses and pedestrian photography that was more about capturing the moment than making it look good. Oppenheim, in contrast, shoots Primetime expressionistically, in low light digital haziness and extreme close-ups, with big orchestral soundscapes playing underneath. He’s clearly aping P.T. Anderson for most of the movie (think the big crescendos in Boogie Nights’ drug house scene, or those drunken shots of Joaquin Phoenix in The Master, or Daniel Day-Lewis eating breakfast in The Phantom Thread), but hey, as the saying goes, if you’re going to steal, might as well steal from the best.

At its conclusion, Primetime leaves its characters in a capitalistic path of destruction. Careers and lives are cashed out by NBC and their corporate advertisers, while we, the public, sit on our couches and stare, mouth agape. This is justice, we tell ourselves, and Chris Hansen our avenging angel.