Primetime Review: Oppenheim Debut Drags Despite Pattinson — SkimNews
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- Lance Oppenheim makes his feature debut with 'Primetime,' a drama-thriller built around the 2004-2008 US reality show 'To Catch a Predator,' which used decoy actors to lure suspected paedophiles into sting houses
- Robert Pattinson plays a preening TV host modeled on Chris Hansen, depicted as gleeful over his show's primetime promotion and relishing weekly confrontations with cornered abusers
- Merritt Wever plays Andie Bender, a hardbitten female executive composite whose persona is inherited from Faye Dunaway's role in Network
- Skyler Gisondo plays Dan Plumb, a baby-faced wannabe actor hired as the decoy who lures abusers indoors — a recruitment scene the film slyly frames as a quasi-grooming episode
- The reviewer notes the film pointedly avoids raising the entrapment question that defined the real show, even though police and prosecutors in the actual format carried the due-process burden
- A secondary plot about a rumored 'whale' — a high-ranking public figure in a small Texan town — drives the story toward a gruesome denouement the reviewer calls inevitable
- Backstage threads (Hansen's failing extra-marital affair, a rival network headhunting Bender) tease conspiratorial possibilities but 'lead nowhere,' leaving whether Hansen changes or learns anything 'a mystery'
Why it matters: The verdict matters for Oppenheim, the acclaimed documentary-maker now pivoting to narrative features: a theatrically atmospheric but thematically evasive debut could chill industry appetite for his next scripted project, while reinforcing Pattinson's range as a credible bet for awards-season consideration despite the vehicle's shortcomings. Critics also flag the film's refusal to engage entrapment as a missed opportunity to interrogate reality TV's most ethically fraught format.
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