Primetime

Or: Keep ‘em Rolling

A word of advice to producers: don’t let the real life subjects of your films preview their own features. To see the real life Chris Hansen debonairly stroll on screen to talk up his personal True Crime platform, before getting a spooky, highly saturated, slightly supernatural version of the same with Robert Pattinson is like watching mechanics of the magic trick before the glamour gets put on. A decent idea but when you already know what’s under the sheet, something is missing.

Pattinson is an actor who is forever taking big swings without any kind of precision. To take the example of this summer’s the Odyssey, as the villainous Antinous, he is electric when coercively seducing Queen Penelope and unintentionally comedic when shouting various names of weaponry from behind a pillar. Fortunately for Primetime, as far as his big swings are concerned, the movie is more piñata vibed than Major Leagues.

On the quest for glory and better ratings for his show, To Catch a Predator, Chris and his producer Andie Bender (Merritt Weaver) will stop at nothing, though Chris believes that in unmasking and pillorying pedophiles he is cleansing the world of an ancient evil, where as to Andie the smooth running of the show and its volatile star, is a more purely personal: though she never says so you can’t imagine her in any other business.

The film also braids in the story of hapless actor Dan Plum (Skyler Gisondo) who sucked into the vortex of Predator as a decoy fifteen year old. No disrespect to Gisondo, who plays Nervous Young Man very well, the story of justice overshadows the one about art no matter how hard the latter tries to upstage the former. The films most gripping moments have a slightly supernatural edge (though this injection has nothing to do with the real life Hansen’s drive, nor the sting operation on which the film’s climax is based), allowing Pattison, obscured by rain on windows, or in a imagined sequence of flying down a electric line, to showcase his fang some, camera ready smile.

The movie’s best bits however are, funnily enough, its brief side eyes to its audience: such as when Hansen catches a sniff of a highly placed predator he asked “Is it the president?” or any of the over the top antics Cortland Gunn (Bokeem Woodbine) the heavily texan chief of police. Between Woodbine and Weaver, who never disappoints, the films askance look and American journalism and enforcement, and how the two often go hand in hand. And it’s Andie’s own cycle of cold cud chewing cynicism to squishy remorse that provide the tastiness treats. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how big you swing, only that you know where your hitting.