The Mixed Bag of A24’s “Primetime”
“Primetime” is the newest film from movie studio A24. It marries Robert Pattinson, initially famous for the Twilight series, with first-time feature-film director Lance Oppenheim. But this movie couldn’t be further from Twilight.
Pattinson plays a fictionalized version of Chris Hansen, the real-life star and host of “To Catch a Predator.” For those unfamiliar, “To Catch a Predator” would set up real-life sting operations on pedophiles attempting to meet children. Hansen would confront the predators on camera before handing them over to the police.
While this may seem like an exceptionally strange premise for a cable TV show, some of the directorial choices are just as odd. The movie has some of the most extreme colors and contrasts I’ve ever seen, with each shot drowning in dark blues, neon oranges and LED reds, often all at the same time. The movie is also filmed on a wide variety of camera types, from grainy 2000’s digital to, bizarrely, an endoscopy camera. And finally the actors, especially Pattison, all have a slow and monotone way of speaking which, compounded with the neon lighting, gives them an almost robotic feel.
Overall the movie has impressive cinematography with well over a dozen memorable shots and line deliveries. However, the impressive artistic choices and plot itself are ultimately just a smokescreen for the core themes and questions the movie asks. Namely, is there such a thing as going too far, even for a good cause? Furthermore, how should we view Hansen? At face value, he is a good man doing a good thing, but throughout the film it is reiterated that his motives are not entirely pure. While these ideas are explored very well at certain times, at others the movie seems to contradict itself on these very ideas.
The actual plot of “Primetime” is hard to pin down, being both incredibly simple and incredibly discordant at the same time. We have a few unresolved scenes sprinkled throughout of Chris dealing with a failing marriage, his producer Andi considering new career options and his young protege, Dan, dealing with personal strife. None seem to go much of anywhere and none contribute to the themes or plot of the film, seeming to exist only for the sake of making the audience uncomfortable with overly personal details and awkward dialogue.
The major threads of the movie, however, focus mostly on Chris’s unending crusade and obsessive nature, climaxing in him recklessly calling for a raid on a would-be predator who ends up killing himself.
I’ll get back to this scene in a moment, as it’s by far the most important of the film, but first I want to discuss a few earlier scenes.
The first is one of my favorites of the movie. In the scene, Hansen is on a plane and gets awoken by an excited fan. It quickly becomes clear, however, that the fan is not a normal person as he begins talking in grotesque detail about the violence he would like to do to these criminals. The camera zooms incredibly close into his face, successfully making the audience cringe in discomfort. But then it suddenly cuts back to Hansen who gives a devilish smile and says: “But what I’m doing is quite a bit worse … don’t you think?”
This scene is well-executed and perfectly sets forth the ideas of the film. Hansen seems to derive sadistic pleasure from torturing these men, forcing the audience to question whether his actions are motivated by true justice or a perverse enjoyment of justice. While this scene challenges Hansen’s motives, in the rest of the film Hansen’s motives are reaffirmed repeatedly, forcing the audience to question if he is, in fact, acting nobly.
At one point in the movie, one of the decoys becomes furious about a product that NBC is selling on its website under the show’s name which seems to glorify pedophilia. This would be a great chance to show that Hansen’s motives aren’t pure; that he doesn’t mind doing unsavory things for money. But instead Hansen is totally and legitimately clueless about this product. If I’m meant to be incredulous on Hansen, why make him innocent in this? And if he’s innocent, then what is the purpose of this scene?
There are also pretty blatant contradictions in Hansen’s characterization. At one point in the movie Hansen screams about being the biggest show on television, a clear indication that he doesn’t just do “To Catch a Predator” to save children. However in another scene he mocks his producer for thinking of ratings at all.
Towards the midpoint of the film, Hansen and his team conduct a particular sting operation, during which the predator becomes aggressive and angry, yelling that Hansen has no right to mete out justice. The music turns into loud and jarring synths, the camera takes on nauseating dutch angles and close up high exposure shots and we abruptly cut to Hansen in the break room, clearly shaken up.
This scene forces the audience to consider whether Hansen is taking things too far. At what point does this almost medieval humiliation ritual become excessive? Hansen’s actions in this scene reflect that he wants to see himself as God’s helper against this particular evil and believes nothing is too far, no matter how cruel or humiliating the punishment may be. But despite the dramatic aesthetics of this scene, it ultimately falls flat for me. The lines are delivered by a pedophile and his comments come off less as a genuine moral critique and more as a man who will say whatever he needs to say to defend himself.
The back half of the film focuses on Hansen’s hunt for a specific predator, whom they call “The Whale.” What makes this one special is that he’s a member of the government: a D.A. in Texas.
This plotline is where the movie thrives both aesthetically and thematically, but also in narrative; the movie seems to finally know where it wants to go. We are shown the “To Catch a Predator” crew slowly bait the D.A. into agreeing to meet up with their decoy. These scenes are tense and dark with the character’s faces often obscured in shadow, the only light coming from the oversized mid 2000s computers. Rain also takes on a significant role here appearing almost constantly, making the film feel even grimmer.
However, ultimately they fail to get the predator to agree to meet up with their decoy and are unsure what to do. He has not yet committed a crime, but clearly has perverted dispositions. Hansen answers the question and coordinates with the police to raid his house live on air. This is a significant escalation of Hansen’s methodology, made even more extraordinary given that the predator is, at least at this point, innocent. The audience is left uneasy.
The raid is the final scene of the film and its climax. Hansen is bordering on manic by this point, staring into the house and seeing the mask repeatedly. As he looks through pouring rain into the window of the D.A., with him staring right back, the D.A. kills himself. And then the movie ends.
This scene accomplishes exactly what it wants to. The audience is in shock; my own eyes were wide open and my mouth agape as I watched the CCTV footage. You feel a sense of empathy and then a feeling of guilt and repulsion realizing whom you’ve just empathized with. On top of that, the decision to not show Hansen react leaves it up to us to guess how he did.
Overall “Primetime” has consistently great production and visuals, but its plot is simplistic and slightly incoherent at times. While the film’s exploration of perverse justice and the man who administers it is thought-provoking, these themes are not as fully developed as one would have hoped. As a result, the audience is not quite sure how to feel or how the movie wants them to feel. This ambiguity might be less of an issue if the plot were more compelling, but because the film relies so heavily on its thematic substance, the viewer is left ultimately unsatisfied.
Photo Caption: Title art for A24’s Primetime
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Dam0812
