Director Lance Oppenheim deploys a terrific ensemble, including Pattinson, Merrit Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Alex Winter and Phoebe Bridgers in an edgy, exploratory thesis on the dark ambitions and darker motivations of "To Catch a Predator"'s Chris Hansen. He has noticed that when his would-be pedophile prey finally spot him, stepping out of an upstairs bedroom or strolling through the kitchen door of the house designed to ensnare evildoers like them, their nostrils tend to flare. Hansen wants that quiver to read onscreen.
He thinks people will like to see it. Perhaps in the very same spirit of ghoulish voyeurism, director Lance Oppenheim has designed “Primetime” as a nightmarishly claustrophobic 4:3 portrait of Hansen as a horror villain, macro-zoomed-in as if, past the point of image degradation, approaching the point at which the portrait becomes all but unrecognisable as a human being, we might be able to peer through the sickly sheen of his skin, dive in through one of his pores and see his very soul. Or the place where his soul once, presumably, lived.
In DP David Bolen’s greasy, saturated images, so livid with grain that it feels like they leave dirt under your fingernails, the film begins in 2006 when then-NBC head Jeff Zucker (played, in quite the coup, by Jeff Zucker) calls Hansen and his producer Andie (Merritt Wever) into a meeting. In response to public demand, and rather against Zucker’s own stated preferences, their show, previously a part of NBC’s “Dateline,” is being moved to its own primetime slot, where it will slug it out for ratings against ABC’s juggernaut “Lost.” In an interesting incidental parallel with the newspaper rivalry outlined in Danny Boyle’s Venice opener “Ink” — another portrait of a media man driven beyond the bounds of morality, with similarly fatal consequences — the desire to surpass “Lost’s” viewership numbers becomes an obsession for Hansen, even though he has distractions aplenty. His relationship with his wife (Anna Faris) and kids is disintegrating and a National Enquirer journo keeps threatening to run an exposé of his infidelities.
Meanwhile Andie is being headhunted by a rival show on another network, and newly recruited “decoy” Dan (Skyler Gisondo) is trying hard to square his naive dreams of acting stardom with his role as the show’s resident underage bait. Then Hansen hears that, in Texas, a potential “whale” (ie. a person of political importance) has maybe taken that bait, and he makes a series of increasingly rash decisions to pursue the man at all costs. Daniel Garber’s inspired, allusive and often very witty editing style constantly makes illuminating connections and interruptions.
But otherwise, this uncompromisingly grimy approach would be actively repellent were it not for the extraordinary performances, which make “Primetime” a thing you cannot stop watching even as the desire to flee to the nearest shower cubicle grows. Most obviously, front and center, and in endlessly intrusive close-up, there’s Pattinson — who also serves as producer — playing the arrogant, fame-addicted, megalomaniac Hansen. Pattinson’s mimicry of the real Hansen’s physical mannerisms, like the awkward staging of his gotcha moments while he clutches a sheaf of damning chatroom printouts, is one thing.
But his vocal impersonation, capturing the self-consciously over-rehearsed cadences of Hansen’s speech, is uncanny. The film’s excellent soundscape, powered by Ari Balouzian’s throbbing, queasy score, often features snatches of Hansen trying out different deliveries of deeply ick messages from the groomer-of-the-moment. But Pattinson’s is only one turn within a stellar cast who individually deliver some career-best screen work.
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