Primetime Review: Robert Pattinson Turns TV Justice Into a Spectacle

Lance Oppenheim's feature debut, Primetime, revisits the era of dial-up internet and grainy VHS tape to examine the Dateline NBC series To Catch a Predator and its host, Chris Hansen. The film, written by first-time screenwriter Ajon Singh, identifies the period as a turning point when television began functioning as an arbiter of communal justice.

Robert Pattinson plays Hansen as an ambitious television journalist who builds ratings by luring child predators in front of network cameras. The film frames him less as a conventional person than as a media construct — a polished assemblage of pixels capable of sealing a subject's fate through damning voiceover and a well-timed close-up.

The opening scene sets the tone. Hansen confronts a Long Beach, California, man who has arrived to meet someone he believes is a 13-year-old girl. Asked what his fate should be, the man suggests the electric chair. Hansen replies, "Dateline NBC," and horror spreads across his face. The minor character is played by Tony Revolori, a casting choice that signals the film's sympathies. A line from British critic Charlie Brooker is invoked to capture the moral unease running through the story: a show that makes viewers feel sorry for potential child-rapists is doing something wrong.

Oppenheim, 30, has worked mainly in documentary, including the HBO series Ren Faire and an upcoming Elizabeth Holmes film co-directed with Nathan Fielder. That nonfiction sensibility shapes Primetime, which offers neither a strong dramatic thrust nor especially deep character portraits. Among those sketched are Predator producer Andie Bender (Merritt Wever), online vigilante Xavier Von Erck (Matthew Maher) and decoys Dan Plumb (Skyler Gisondo) and Del Harvey (Phoebe Bridgers). A more detailed history appears in David Osit's 2025 documentary, Predators.

Instead, the film is built around a shift in the media landscape. Jeff Zucker, the former NBC Universal chief playing himself, tells Hansen he dislikes To Catch a Predator but notes that audiences do not, and places it in primetime on Wednesday nights opposite ABC's Lost, increasing pressure to deliver fresh targets. The setup recalls other television-news portraits, including Dan Gilroy's Nightcrawler.

Primetime revels in the dated 2000s aspirations of its characters — would-be serious journalists chasing ratings and Hollywood hopefuls coaxed into performing as underage children. The film sits in judgment of them throughout, a perspective that is not unfair but rarely three-dimensional. Its deeper concern is with two-dimensional screens and their capacity to wreck lives, warranted or not. When a fan on a plane asks Hansen whether he is ever tempted to physically bleed the show's targets, he smiles and says his work may be a little worse.

The cast elevates the material, particularly Wever, whose producer is casually skilled at the manipulation her job requires, and Bridgers, an uncannily natural presence in her first major film role. But the film belongs to Pattinson, whose Hansen is an anxious adjudicator driven toward a bigger target — a "whale" — as his hypocrisy becomes more apparent. A National Enquirer reporter keeps calling with his own expose on Hansen.

From the outset, the film suggests that what Hansen vilifies is within him too: he quotes, perhaps relishing, the lurid chat room exchanges of his subjects. There are few surprises in this vividly realized but predetermined drama, yet its case is hard to argue with. As Hansen puts it, there used to be a pillory in every village; now there is a television in every living room.

Primetime, an A24 release in theaters Friday, is rated R for disturbing sexual material, graphic nudity, some violent content and language. Running time: 110 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.