Primetime, Review: An up-dater on predators
Primetime, Review: An up-dater on predators
Look at the premise. There is a show on NBC TV in the USA, called Predator. It lures potential sex offenders/paedophiles into meetings with its decoy boys and girls, and then gets them beaten-up and arrested by the police, before they have harmed the decoy. The host is a man who had won as Emmy in 1996. But now, in 2006, he is not awarded for his work. The show is popular, with high ratings, though other shows rank above this one. A young acting hopeful appears for an audition at NBC. He has had only one or two insignificant acting/singing assignments till then. Aged 23, being baby-faced, he can pass off as someone much younger. He is recruited by NBC, to act as a male decoy, luring internet predators into possible sexual encounters. And before anything happen, the host appears, and tells the predator that he has been filmed on video cameras, and is handed over to the police. Triggers imagination, and raises expectations. A political thriller? No, a psychological thriller! But what a let-down!
Leading the cast is Robert Pattinson, an actor known for his mature approach to characters. Pattinson is also the producer. There are some 100 close-ups of him, but you can barely make sense of what he is uttering or mumbling. Sometimes, he is just too soft, at other times, the music drowns the dialogue and at still other times, the accent chews-up the words. I am positive that I would have understood, and, perhaps, appreciated the film much better if it had sub-titles. Burred images, blank/black screens, numerous uses of large mirrors to show four persons talking, instead of two, do not help at all. Though the film is titled Primetime, it is all about the show, Predators, which, on the net, appears as To Catch a Predator. Based on an article that appeared in 2007 (on another website, the year is indicated as 2009), in the renowned magazine, Esquire, headlined ‘Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die, as first-hand account, written by,’ by Luke Dittrich, has its roots in a true story.
Aged 67 now, Christopher Edward Hansen is an American television presenter, journalist, and YouTube personality. During his tenure as a correspondent for Dateline NBC, he hosted the programme's segment, To Catch a Predator (2004–2007), which revolved around catching potential online predators, using a sting (decoy), operation, earning him the moniker, The Predator Hunter. Hansen has a YouTube channel which has attracted 683,000 subscribers and 46.2 million views. Over the years, he was won ten Emmy Awards. It has been reported in the American press that Primetime is a “dynamic, visual feast, with a stellar performance from the actor. The director soaks the atmosphere in the video age, the shots, fuzzy, and often marked with time codes, as if you’re watching through a camcorder’s viewfinder. But the script plays loose with the facts.”
After seeing the film, I disagree with that American press article that terms Pattinson’s performance “Stellar”. The visual feast is most often jarring and disorienting. For the rest, I am with the article. As far as the reality is concerned, Hansen himself called the Esquire story “A hatchet job.” He revealed that over the 20 episodes on Dateline, and intermittently during the two decades since, he’s been part of dozens of busts, with men thinking they’re about to meet a minor for sex. Hansen calmly picks the suspects apart with questions about their intentions and, when they inevitably deny that they planned to do anything sexual, confronts them with their own words, reading back the transcripts of the Internet chats. Over time, Hansen says, he’s been involved in more than 500 arrests, watching as religious leaders (a rabbi, a Sunday school teacher), lawyers, real estate brokers and military veterans are cuffed and hauled away. The rabbi incident is depicted in the film.
Coming to what the film shows us, Hansen and his producer, Andie Bender, meet with NBC head Jeff Zucker, who acknowledges the show's ratings success, despite his personal dislike for its content, and puts it in the primetime slot, competing with ABC's hit show Lost. Aspiring actor Dan Plum, looking to gain credits for membership to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), is cast as one of To Catch a Predator's decoys, requiring him to pretend to be a teenage boy. Although he is initially disoriented and disturbed by the shooting process, he acclimatises to the job, and comes to admire Hansen. Meanwhile, in Fort Myers, Florida, Hansen, a married man with a son, breaks off an affair with a younger woman at a restaurant, unaware that he is being photographed. A reporter for the National Enquirer later makes threatening calls asking for comment on an upcoming story about Hansen's extramarital affair.
Hansen becomes consumed by his desire to make To Catch a Predator the biggest show on television. An executive from ABC attempts to poach Andie to produce a show inspired by the success of To Catch a Predator, called What Would You Do? Andie initially declines, but reconsiders, as Hansen's behaviour grows increasingly erratic. Dan worries that To Catch a Predator will not advance his career the way he hoped. Hansen tells him that their work is "cleansing the world of an ancient evil", giving him a bracelet he received in India while investigating a story about the mysterious disappearance of children, which earned him an Emmy.
There are a few scenes, set in South India, but they are filmed almost like ghost stories. There is smart twist at the end of the film, which is one of the segments where the director, Lance Oppenheim, uses the straight narrative format, to catch a big fish, who the call the ‘whale’, but no spoilers. Unless I missed some crucial scenes, it appears that the producers use the same decoy, Dan Plum, repeatedly. If he is seen on camera, even once, then the viewers, including the Predators, would recognise him, and avoid falling into the trap. There is only one other decoy shown in the film, a young woman, who, like Dan, looks much younger than her age.
It is a wishy-washy debut by director Lance Oppenheim, known for his documentary work. There is plenty of substance available, but he settles for style-over-substance. Producer Ajon Singh, who reveals that his mother is an immigrant, has also written the script. “I used to call economics my decoy major for my parents so they wouldn’t actually ask me what I was doing. I started the USC Economics Review with a couple of students, and that was where I could write. I would sneak into film events and certain classes, trying to soak up as many screenwriting things as I could. I thought, I’ll just graduate, call myself a screenwriter, and I’ll be hired instantly. Of course, that was not the case. I drove Uber, worked in casting at “Survivor.” Eventually, I was able to find my way into a writers’ room as a writers’ assistant.
“Because my mom was an immigrant, she would watch ‘Dateline NBC’ every night, to understand how America worked,” the writer-producer says. “And she would make me watch ‘To Catch a Predator’ with her to stay safe on the internet. I was 10 years old, so I didn’t have a grasp of what the crimes being committed were, what online predators are.
Singh’s knowledge of “To Catch a Predator” proved useful when a producer was desperately looking for someone to take an interest in a 2007 Esquire article, “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die,” which chronicled a “Predator” sting operation that ended in a suicide.
“I wrote the script, and I was really proud of it, and then we took it to the marketplace and nobody engaged,” Singh says. “And, like an angel from the heavens, I get a call from [producer Will Iannaccone] saying, ‘Rob Pattinson has read the script and wants to meet you’.”
“I was a writer on a Netflix show, and I could tell it was not going to come out, so I was looking for something to pour myself into. While I was sorting that out, I was meeting one of my old colleagues. This producer, Will Iannaccone, walked in, and we were talking about “Network,” one of my all-time favourite films. Will was like, “I have this article, but everyone I take it to, nobody gives a shit. I would love for you to read it; it’s about ‘To Catch a Predator’.” I read the article, and Chris Hansen’s obviously the meaty role in this movie, but what really pulled me in was this failing 20-something-year-old actor, who’s cast to play a 13-year-old boy, and this is his big break.” Oppenheim has called Pattinson's Hansen in Primetime "a cross between Jerry Maguire and Dracula". Try and decode that.
I could not agree more about what he has said about Gisondo. If there is one performance that stands out, it is that of Skyler Gisondo (Booksmart-2019, Licorice Pizza-2021, and Superman-2025) as Dan Plum. Though 30 in real-life, he is made to say that he is 23, and pretend to be 13, as the decoy. There is uncanny naturalness about him. He seems vulnerable and highly ambitious, as the occasion demands. In one scene, Hansen plays with his name, “Dan, Danny, Daniel….Dan Decoy. You will get credit on the show as Dan Decoy.” We might see more of him, soon.
Somewhat ill-defined is Merritt Wever as Andie Bender, Hansen's producer. Adequate support comes from Matthew Maher as Xavier Von Erck, an online vigilante and the founder of Perverted-Justice, Anna Faris as Mary Joan Hansen, Chris's wife (cameo), Bokeem Woodbine as Cortland Gunn (convincing), the Rockwall County chief of police, Alex Winter as Bill Conradt, assistant district attorney of Rockwall County, Texas, a crucial cameo. Before they hire Dan, NBC is shown using Phoebe Bridgers as Del Harvey, a young decoy who plays both boys and girls on the show. A musician, Phoebe Bridgers makes her narrative feature acting debut with this film. Jeff Zucker is cast as himself. Zucker oversaw programming for NBC Universal, at the time To Catch a Predator aired. Perfect casting is in evidence when it comes to the predators: Tony Revolori as an ex-Marine child predator, Jonathan Lipnicki as a child predator caught on the show, using the screen name Crazyfrog73, who is caught naked in a kitchen, David Fierro as a child predator caught on the show, who uses the screen name Raysfan22. Very interestingly, three other predators are played by real-life film-makers, in cameos: Caveh Zahedi, Jason Woliner, and Eugene Kotlyarenko. I cannot identify who plays the rabbi predator, but he must be either Caveh Zahedi or Eugene Kotlyarenko, and has done a damn good job of it.
Certified for exhibition to Adults Only, the film has a generous dose of sexual references and dialogue, but there is no frontal nudity or sexual intercourse shown. (On the lighter side, A24 is the name of the production House, and not a censor classification).
For those unwary filmgoers, who might have never thought of paedophilia as a growing menace, the film serves as un update. If you have the patience to sit through all 109 minutes of it, and if your eyes and ears are extra sharp, you might get more out of the movie than I did. So, giving it the benefit of doubt, my rating is two-and-a-half.
Rating: ** ½
