Is the hunt for justice morally correct if it’s wrapped in sensationalism?
2026’s Primetime is director Lance Oppenheim’s first narrative feature after a series of documentaries, and he’s chosen a rich story to center his debut on. The film follows Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen, host of the 2000s-era To Catch a Predator (TCAP), which depicted Hansen and his team using decoys to lure pedophiles out of their hiding spots, where they’d be confronted, humiliated, and led away in handcuffs.
What’s been immortalized in culture as justice unfolding on television takes on a different tone in Primetime, which is a black comedy, thriller, and fever dream, where Hansen begins losing himself in his obsession with increasing the TCAP stakes. To say I loved it would be a massive understatement.
Pattinson’s turn as Hansen is truly incredible, and though my exposure to Hansen is mostly through clips and interviews, I found his performance to be spot-on without seeming like a cut-and-dry impersonation. But it was Skyler Gisondo’s performance as “Decoy Dan” that blew me away. Dan’s role is to pose as a preteen boy in order to lure men into the sting houses in various cities. While the film centers around Hansen, Dan has the more complete and fascinating character arc. In my passive TCAP knowledge, I’d never considered the emotional impact these stings and interactions would have on the various decoys used by the show, and Primetime emphasizes that. While alternate decoy Del (Phoebe Bridgers) is mostly desensitized to her role as pedophile bait, Dan begins apprehensive and shaken, before taking the role in stride. He even imitates Hansen while the host is breaking down in one scene, though it’s not clear if this is growth: is Dan learning how to protect children, or how to perform better?
Spoiler alert here — the film culminates with the attempted arrest of the “whale,” a term used by Hansen to describe a presumed high-status pedophile that would boost the show’s rating. However, as law enforcement moves in to arrest Texas assistant district attorney Bill Conradt, he shoots and kills himself, ultimately leading to the end of TCAP.
I’d already read the Esquire article Primetime is based on (Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die) and was, therefore, familiar with the Conradt sting that ended the show. But the suspense in the film was so well done that I found myself watching through my fingers at certain points — high praise, considering part of the suspense included Dan singing Rent to Conradt moments before his death.
The murky ethics of TCAP have been debated for years since the show’s conclusion. While many argue Hansen and the show did solid work putting these men away — with the national humiliation of being recorded a happy addition — others disagree, believing the showrunners put ratings and sensationalism over morals. There’s validity to the second point: in Collin County, Texas, for instance, charges against 23 caught predators were dropped in 2007 due to shoddy evidence and lack of cooperation by the vigilante group associated with the show, according to prosecutors. In this instance, the use of Hansen and the show ultimately resulted in a failure to convict. Clearly, televised exposure doesn’t always mean genuine accountability.
These debates are what Primetime seeks to explore, but not necessarily to answer.
Detractors of the film argue that Oppenheim seeks to criticize Hansen more than the pedophiles being put away. I would staunchly disagree with this. Yes, the film is critical of Hansen, both professionally and personally — he’s a perfectionist, he’s teetering on the edge of a breakdown, he’s cheating on his wife, and he’s barely present in his kids’ lives. But this doesn’t mean the pedophiles are let off the hook.
There’s a tendency to believe the world is black-and-white, good and bad, and every individual fits neatly into one of the categories. I would agree that the film humanizes the predators, but I’d argue this isn’t a bad thing. The predators are human. It’s detrimental to our understanding of pedophilia and crime to assume every perpetrator is a stone-cold monster. It’s a comforting idea to imagine that the people who commit these crimes are as reprehensible in the rest of their lives, but it’s simply untrue. I appreciated the film’s dedication to showing this juxtaposition. (Also, notably, the “sympathetic arrests” depicted — including a man with cerebral palsy and a rabbi — all did actually occur.)
In the culminating sting, Hansen begins to see Conradt as a literal monster, referring back to an experience he had investigating missing children in India. I found this to be a brilliant way to bring in this theme of the film. Hansen, at this point, has begun to struggle with his role in the show; to assuage these feelings, he turns Conradt into a monster. If Conradt is a monster, then Hansen is unequivocally a hero. The question is whether we agree with Hansen.
TCAP is also, notably, a distinctly post-9/11 work, specifically its preoccupation with surveillance, good vs. evil, and a need for control. It wraps all of these elements in a reassuring formula: yes, evil exists, but we’ve found someone who knows how to stamp it out. The world becomes divided into predator vs protector. Primetime complicates this idea — what if the protector isn’t the hero we thought he was? Can we trust our protector to always act morally?
There’s another interesting metatextual layer of presenting this criticism of media sensationalism through a sensationalized film. I found myself caught up in the suspense and humor of the stings; it’s unsurprising to me how the show gained so much popularity in its heyday.
Primetime offers a fascinating lens through which we can examine our relationship with media, exploitation, and the gray area between good and bad. It raises questions it refuses to answer for us, leaving the audience to consider what we’re willing to excuse in the pursuit of justice. The film is critical of Hansen, critical of the predators, and also somewhat critical of the audience. Hansen may have, to an extent, compromised his morals by constantly seeking a bigger, more dramatic confrontation; did we compromise our morals by being so eager to watch?