Review: PRIMETIME

 by Rob DiCristino

In which our Robert Pattinson summer transitions to our Robert Pattinson fall.

In the decade and change since he wrapped up his work on the Twilight saga, Robert Pattinson has quietly put together one of the most eccentric and fascinating filmographies in Hollywood. He’s become a favorite collaborator of auteurs like Christopher Nolan, David Cronenberg, Werner Herzog, Bong Joon Ho, and Hayao Miyazaki. He’s boosted newcomers like Josh Safdie and Robert Eggers, and he’s even strapped on the cowl of The Goddamn Batman just for good measure. Though he’s blessed with leading-man good looks and impossible charm, Pattinson has eschewed the path of conventional A-listers like Brad Pitt and George Clooney at every turn, resisting easy paychecks from brainless actioners and romantic comedies — unless they’re absolute freakshows like this year’s underrated The Drama — and taking the road less traveled. Good thing, too. A “normal” acting career would be a waste of Pattinson’s left-handed, cock-eyed potential, and our cinematic landscape is a far better place thanks to his unwavering commitment to the offbeat and the absurd.

It should be no surprise, then, that Pattinson’s flavor of four-quadrant drama would be renowned documentarian Lance Oppenheim’s narrative debut, Primetime, a sleazy, strung-out thriller that chronicles the rise of 2000s NBC tentpole To Catch a Predator and its star, Chris Hansen. Eager to dethrone Lost as the gold standard in Must-See TV, Hansen (Pattinson) weaponizes America’s lurid fascination with its own depravity by drawing would-be child sex predators into the “homes” of youthful decoys like Dan Plumb (Skyler Gisondo) and Del Harvey (Phoebe Bridgers, in her acting debut) before exposing them live on camera and turning them over to the police. Hansen’s smug self-assurance makes him the ideal mouthpiece for a nation of deluded malcontents, an audience of hypocrites and moralizers too oblivious to admit their own complicity in the perversions of their society. Along with ruthless producer Andie Bender (Merritt Wever, channeling Faye Dunaway in Network), Hansen plumbs the depths of the Heartland for the sickest monsters he can find.

But as Oppenheim and screenwriter Ajon Singh illuminate with endless perverse pleasure, flop-sweated attention seekers like Hansen need not look very far for sickness and depravity. Hansen’s serial philandering already has his picture-perfect marriage to Mary Joan (Anna Faris, in a rare dramatic turn) hanging on by a thread, and his unscrupulous approach to Predator’s production standards — including selling branded thongs that read “Contents Are Over the Age of 18” on the show’s official website — leaves many of his targets rightfully questioning the sturdiness of his particular high horse. As Predator’s popularity builds to a fever pitch, Hansen and his team find themselves uncomfortable bedfellows with its Extremely Normal and Well-Adjusted fanbase — overfunded redneck police departments, kill-crazy online vigilantes, NBCUniversal program director Jeff Zucker, etc. — who lead them to their biggest score yet: Rockwell County, Texas’ Assistant District Attorney and budding sexual predator, Bill Conradt (Alex Winter; yes, that Alex Winter).

Combining the withering social commentary of Paddy Chayefsky with the grimy nihilism of Dan Gilroy’s masterful Nightcrawler, Primetime tosses out the conventional “Based on a True Story” playbook in favor of something darker, nastier, and infinitely more excoriating. This isn’t the tale of a journalist who loses his integrity — NBC Nightly News’ Stone Phillips (Bill Heck) never tires of reminding Hansen that he’s always been a hack and always will be — or a parable about the bold lengths that Good must go to in order to bring down Evil. No, everyone on the Predator team revels in their abhorrent opportunism, from Hansen — who believes catching a well-connected sicko will absolve him of his own transgressions — through Bender — who joyfully admits to a rival producer that she doesn’t care much for “the feel-good stuff” — all the way down to “Decoy” Dan Plumb, who’s willing to play as many hairless twinks as it takes for him to get a SAG card. Only Bridgers’ Del Harvey grows a conscience, but her revolution is so muted and incidental that we barely notice it at all.

Primetime’s detractors will argue that it lacks any substantive insight into human nature or investigative journalism, especially in the wake of David Osit’s 2025 documentary on the same subject, Predators. That may be a fair criticism! But Oppenheim and Pattinson are not crafting an archetypal tragic hero here. This isn’t the Rise and Fall of Henry Hill. Their Chris Hansen isn’t Jay Gatsby. He isn’t Daniel Plainview. The Chris Hansen of Primetime is a fucking vampire — a selfish, contemptible degenerate who embodies David Fincher’s great maxim on the human race: “People are liars and perverts.” Why does he risk his marriage to fuck random women? Because he’s a shithead! Why does he weaponize the deep-seated personality disorders of honeypot hackers like Xavier Von Erck (Matthew Maher)? Because he’s a sociopath! Audiences hoping for a psychological profile of “social deviants” like the men Hansen targets (including familiar faces like Tony Revolori and Jonathan Lipnicki) are missing the point of Primetime: We’re all culpable. We’re all guilty. It’s as simple as that.

Primetime hits U.S. theaters on Friday, September 25th.