3.5 stars (ai-assisted writing from dictation)
*To Catch a Predator* is the most gauche operation possible. It is also aligned with destroying pedophiles, which gives its bad taste somewhere to hide. *Primetime* takes this thing and makes a color textbook out of it. This is Lance Oppenheim operating 24/7 to get his shot. The composition is so delicate, the attention to color so sustained, that I kept thinking I should be able to subsist on the excellent visuals. And then I would want the movie to fucking move.
The film goes through a series of tone-set pieces, people working on their identities inside this house where they catch predators. They’re all just chilling out in this house together. That’s part of the weird pleasure of it. The predators enter in an even enough mix that the movie doesn’t become too harsh to hang out with. We’re usually meeting them at the moment of presumed victory: they’ve arrived, they’re caught, we know how this goes. The show has already arranged the encounter so we can enjoy it. Oppenheim gives us time to enjoy the people arranging it.
And then there’s Pattinson’s voice. At the opening he says "I will undress you, and you will undress me" to the pedophile, and it's a moment of complete victory in filmmaking. I do viscerally enjoy Robert Pattinson’s Chris Hansen. Hansen already has this voice that makes him Hansen, and now Pattinson gets inside it, performs the performance. I first dismissed too much of this as scenery-chewing. The movie is wonderfully about his voice. But I can hear how good the voice is and still get sick of the man.
The decoys are doing another version of this work. There’s the guy who finds predators online and charms them through texts: the predator’s predator, the Judas goat. His sequence has this steamy, manga-like, buzzy excitement to it. He’s making somebody want to be there. The identity he supplies is fake; the wanting has to work. Hansen needs to be recognized immediately, and the decoy needs somebody to believe in a person who isn’t there. Between them they manufacture both sides of the encounter.
Which still leaves a lot of stupid jokes. Pattinson’s physical gags pile up, and eventually he seems to run out of energy. There’s the moment in body armor, standing in front of a window, that seems to quote *Batman*. I can see how Hansen making himself into this ridiculous figure belongs in the movie. But Pattinson’s performance isn’t good all the way through. God, it’s even badly directed at times, though. Fuck. It really is. Robert Pattinson is capable of doing bad. He’s not a fucking genie. He’s more like a clown.
*Nightcrawler* was a brilliant ride. I keep thinking there’s a version of *Primetime* with this much visual intelligence that is also exciting and well-paced. The relationships are shallow; the development is predictable; the comedy keeps arriving where I want something else to happen. People in the theater were laughing and I wasn’t. Calling the acting gauche, and then discovering that gaucheness is a theme, doesn’t make those minutes better. I demand that great art take great care at the absolute surface level. You should just feel affected. The movie has to do something with the time I’m giving it.
There is a moment when it absolutely does. One of the decoys is exposed to a predator’s penis, and he is clearly shaken by it. Someone gets their dick out, right? Something fucked up happens. I don’t remember seeing that particular kind of violation handled quite this way before. It’s something he can laugh off, perhaps, and something that clearly stays with him. "That happens to all of us"- the Producer.
*To Catch a Predator* essentially brought back the pillory. That’s the pleasure sitting inside its presumed victory: we get to watch somebody face us. In *Primetime*, the district attorney kills himself before facing the pillory. The film spends time on his turmoil, enough that he becomes quasi-sympathetic. The weight of that acting feels like a counterbalance to the gaucheness elsewhere.
Then there’s *Rent*. “Seasons of Love.” In a phone call, the district attorney has the opportunity for a little more joy with his fake partner, his fake underage partner. That last fact keeps making the tenderness awkward. The voice he wants to hear belongs to the operation catching him. Still, he wants to hear it. The song feels like the gauche center of the movie: hopeful but dark, cynical but also legitimate.
“the vulgar sentiment becomes capable of carrying genuine pity.” - ChatGPT
I felt guilt afterward, but in a kind of gentle way. That’s a really good outcome for a movie I’d found this irritating. In retrospect, I appreciate it more. There’s so much good composition throughout it. It’s difficult to make a judgment that gives that its due without starting to excuse every dull scene. I was affected afterward. I was bored during it. Both happened.
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I can imagine *Primetime* working as a household cinematic object. You can hang out with this movie: take a break, walk around, come back, let the voice and the color fill the room again. I haven’t done that yet. It might be wonderful the second time. Or this might also be a litany of excuses for a slow movie: I have a ton of respect for it, and it was kind of a drag.
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