Primetime

Last night my nephew and I saw Primetime at the Broadway and, the more I think about it, the more I like it.  Broadcast journalist Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson) hosts a reality show called To Catch a Predator, which grew from segments filmed for Dateline NBC, using hidden cameras to capture undercover sting operations conducted by the watchdog group Perverted Justice in which adult men are lured to a house to have sex with minors played by decoys before being confronted by Hansen.  He has grandiose ideas about serving the public good, even if the program is a bit sordid, and often treats his subordinates badly, especially his producer Andie Bender (Merritt Wever) and a decoy named Del Harvey (Phoebe Bridgers).  The show becomes wildly popular so the NBC Head of Programming Jeff Zucker (Himself) moves it to a prime time slot against ABC's Lost.  Hansen soon becomes preoccupied with improving ratings and hires an aspiring actor named Dan Plum (Skyler Gisondo) to portray a decoy but an indiscretion with a woman makes the stakes even higher for him.  He breaks with the usual protocol to actively pursue a high profile predator, assistant district attorney Bill Conradt (Alex Winter), with tragic consequences.  The focus of this movie is the intersection between justice and entertainment and it was very intriguing to see how each character abandons the pursuit of the greater good in favor of self-promotion, especially when Dan continues to participate despite his misgivings because he wants to earn a SAG card.  The visuals are incredibly stylized with distorted angles, extreme close-ups, high-contrast lighting, and lurid color grading (I found it very uncomfortable to watch at times) and it replicates the look of the original show with 16mm film.  Pattinson, who imitates Hansen's voice and mannerisms so accurately that it is uncanny, gives a fascinating and unsettling performance as a man so consumed by his own success that it becomes his downfall and I was particularly struck by the many scenes in which he practices his lines while looking in a mirror because you can see him unraveling right before your eyes. Wever and Gisondo are also outstanding and I loved some of the cameos for the child predators (I was shocked, in more ways than one, to see Jonathan Lipnicki).  This is definitely a movie that will generate interesting conversations and I highly recommend it.