From 2004 to 2007, Chris Hansen hosted Dateline NBC’s "To Catch a Predator." The show was recently the subject of the documentary "Predators." Now Hansen is the focus of the film "Primetime," which just opened in theaters.
Hansen popularized the phrase, "Why don’t you have a seat right there …" Not even "South Park" could resist using it and Hansen in its episode "Le Petit Tourette."
"To Catch a Predator" was NBC’s controversial news program in which Hansen targeted adults attempting to hook up with minors, whom his team enticed through carefully devised sting operations. The new movie "Primetime" offers a fictionalized and generally unflattering portrait of Hansen.
Hansen has been all over the media sharing his reaction — not a favorable one — to the film and his version of how A24 and the filmmakers approached him about doing the story. But Hansen is the type of person who views any press and attention as good, so he is eating this up and using it as an opportunity to promote his current version of catching predators on his TruBlu streaming channel.
Some of Hansen's comments about the film note its disconnect with reality, which is rather amusing coming from someone whose own show played loose with the idea of reality. So the film and Hansen's response mix together to add an appropriate kind of surrealism to the whole thing.
The film "Primetime" offers an intense Robert Pattinson as Hansen. Soon after the film begins, Hansen has his show moved to a primetime slot against the ratings king "Lost." This fires him up because primetime demands bigger fish.
"No more bottom feeders," Hansen says in the film. "I want a whale."
We follow Hansen in his run-up to an episode where his “whale” shoots himself during taping, leading to the show's cancellation.
"Primetime" marks documentary filmmaker Lance Oppenheim’s first foray into narrative film. Interestingly, it comes out just weeks before the documentary he co-directed, "You Can See Everything," about another high-profile person of dubious morality, Elizabeth Holmes, will hit theaters.
In a Variety story published Friday, Oppenheimer revealed that the seed for "Primetime" was laid back in 2024 when his wife bought him a Chris Hansen Cameo for $40.
"It sounds almost glib, but it’s hard to communicate how big a fascination this became for me," he told the trade publication. "You could pay this guy $40, and he would pretend you were a potential predator, then go on to advertise his new investigations. There was something so macabre about it. It’s almost like the man saw the meme and decided to adopt the persona."
That seed makes perfect sense for a film that explores Hansen's drive to find success and fame on TV. Oppenheim's portrait may not be flattering, but he does present Hansen as someone driven to fight evil in a way that, well, Pattinson does as Batman. We may not see him like that, but Oppenheim makes us understand that Hansen sees himself that way — at least in the film.
"Primetime" questions Hansen’s methods of vigilante justice and public shaming. But the film casts its net beyond Hansen to deliver a lurid commentary on how news has become entertainment, employing actors to create reality, how egos drive decisions and how predatory behavior seems to have become the norm while grooming takes many forms.
For a film set in the world of television, where appearance is everything, Oppenheim chooses to shoot in unflattering close-ups with oversaturated colors that make everyone’s skin look unappealingly blotchy, as if they’re rife with infection. Only Stone Phillips, a fellow NBC on-air personality whose success Hansen aspires to, is shot in more flattering lighting, as if he is some transcendent being just out of reach. Oppenheim also chooses a claustrophobic, boxy aspect ratio, adding to our visual discomfort.
There's an ickiness that permeates the film. We expect the pedophiles to make us uncomfortable, but the people hunting them are equally disturbing. The predators depicted in the film at least seem to exhibit shame and are embarrassed when caught. But the folks in the TV world seem shameless as they pursue their ratings. And in a way, the film made me uncomfortable because I felt like the pedophiles Hansen was trapping were more human than he was. With the Epstein files still not completely released and a lack of public and political demand to see people punished, that is not really how I want to feel. But Hansen does not come across as a knight in shining armor, even if he sees himself that way.
There is an interesting scene where Hansen is on a plane and a fellow passenger recognizes him. Hansen seems initially annoyed, but when the passenger praises him, his attitude changes. Then the man says, of the predators Hansen traps, "Don't you ever just wanna bleed 'em?" The man seems to almost lick his lips at the thought of such violent retribution.
But Hansen replies that maybe what he does is worse.
At the center of the film is Pattinson’s riveting performance as Hansen. I never would have imagined that the sparkling vampire of "Twilight" could be this good of an actor, but Pattinson has been making serious strides to distance himself from that earlier work by taking solid and demanding roles. You can’t take your eyes off Pattinson or the film, but you want to take a shower after.
