PRIMETIME.In the early 21st century, there was a weird man who created a weird show. He was/is Chris Hansen, and the show was To Catch a Predator, an ethically dubious hidden-camera entrapment program ostensibly designed to apprehend pedophiles but also, as we learn from this fictionalized account, to beat Lost in the Nielsens. The prickly intersection of justice and notoriety is where Primetime, directed by Lance Oppenheim (the upcoming You Can See Everything), with antic, artful curiosity, places itself.
Catching Hansen (Robert Pattinson) and Predator midstride in the run-up to cultural infamy, Primetime takes us deep within the machine of the show, propelled mainly by Xavier Von Erck (Matthew Maher) of the self-described vigilante group Perverted Justice. Von Erck spends his squalid days trawling the nascent internet for sex-criminal targets and, of course, watching porn. Then, under the purview of mildly conflicted producer Andie Bender (Merritt Weaver), the production team moves the operation from city to city, following Von Erck’s leads and staging houses baited with actors portraying unaccompanied minors. When a would-be predator has entered the trap, Hansen dramatically appears, confronting his quarry with a battery of probably unanswerable questions, the target then being handed over to local law-enforcement.
A documentarian, Oppenheim is clearly fascinated by the story behind or within the story, and this material affords him an opportunity to explore and expand on the numerous strands of motivation and compulsion that make up the tapestry of human inscrutability. As portrayed by Pattinson, Hansen is a crusader motivated, at least in part, by low self-esteem and a not-so internalized need for recognition. Dan Plum (Skyler Gisondo), the baby-faced actor brought on mid-series to play the innocent, sees himself as an artist but is also the moral center of the piece, a font of sympathy consumed by the performer’s insatiable urge to do the work and intoxicated by the bright lights of his first big opportunity. Bender, charged with the unenviable task of making this whole bizarre enterprise actually function, seems just as skeptical about Hansen as about the vagaries of the business at hand, but she is also very much in the business of show; she wants to beat the other team.
Having established the milieu and primary cast of players, Primetime focuses on the process leading up to the horrific incident that would become the undoing of To Catch a Predator. As Von Erck pursues a “whale” in Texas, an individual of presumed public prominence, Hansen becomes consumed by the lead, feverish to land the big one, to cement himself as a television star and, misguidedly, an investigative journalist.
Cinematically, Primetime is one of the more ambitious releases of the year, blending recreated sub rosa footage with dramatically staged and lit behind-the-scenes sequences. The result is a frequently discomfiting sort of melodrama with unstoppable narrative drive and fascinating, occasionally over-the-top performance. It’s no accident that we have here a Batman playing our complicated protagonist. Pattinson is ideal in the lead, pitching his voice from quavering to stentorian and arranging his face into a cartoon rictus of judgment. Gisondo, a rising star who seems uniquely capable of finding perfect roles, embodies the conflict inherent in pursuing celebrity through art, a starry-eyed empath caught up in the bright lights.
Frequently off-putting but always entertaining, Primetime reflects contemporary American culture’s twinned self-righteousness and fascination with celebrity by cleverly, even transgressively, plumbing its own moral ambiguity with left-handed subtlety and cinematic deftness that mightbe lost on an audience hoping for more of the show’s self-ascribed scruples. R. 110M. BROADWAY, MINOR.
HEART OF THE BEAST. Wilderness adventures are as evergreen as they come, in terms of fodder for books and movies; ditto tales of human-animal relationships. Because they are, by their nature, so universally accessible, such stories can be overwrought, underdeveloped and enslaved by convention. Heart of the Beast isn’t not those things, but it’s got Brad Pitt starring with David Ayer (Harsh Times, 2005; Fury, 2014) behind the camera and one of the most expressive animal actors I’ve ever seen (Odin the dog), so conventionality can be forgiven where it isn’t overridden by craft.
James Belmont (Pitt), a U.S. Army Special Forces Sergeant-Major, retired with his command dog, is pitted against the Alaskan wilderness following a cardiac incident and plane crash. That’s the whole of the synopsis, but Pitt, ever able to play both to and against his stardom and clearly comfortable collaborating with Ayer, elevates the moments that make up what we must acknowledge as a pretty well-worn narrative.
In broader terms, this is a movie that could very easily be bad, but it isn’t. That doesn’t mean it’s an elevated work exactly, but it holds together admirably well, considering. Pitt’s unique leading-man confidence, underpinned by self-effacing humor, serves us all well here (provided one, like me, is an ardent fangirl), allowing an immersively constructed story to carry us along. PG13. 101M. BROADWAY.
John J. Bennett (he/him) is a movie nerd who loves a good car chase.
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For showtimes, visit catheaters.com and minortheatre.com.
This article appears in Xine:wh-ding.