‘Primetime’ Makes Robert Pattinson’s Chris Hansen Impossible to Root For

Robert Pattinson stars as Chris Hansen in Primetime. Our review breaks down a film where almost nobody comes off looking good.

Chris Hansen never asks the men on his show a question he already knows the answer to. That’s the trick of To Catch a Predator, and it’s the trick Primetime turns back on Hansen himself. Robert Pattinson plays the host at the exact moment the show became a “primetime juggernaut” in the making, and the film doesn’t let him, or nearly anyone around him, off the hook. Director Lance Oppenheim, working from a 2007 Esquire article, skips the origin story and drops the audience straight into production at its most confident. This isn’t a beginning-to-end account. It’s the ambition, mid-collapse.

Landed in the Middle of the Machine

Primetime isn’t structured as a straight chronology. Instead, it lands the audience in the middle of the show’s production, watching Hansen “in all of his glory, or anti-glory,” as the operation ramps toward bigger numbers. The film draws on a 2007 Esquire article and touches on real fallout from the original show, including an incident tied to a man’s death connected to one of its stings.

Hansen doesn’t come off well here, and by some accounts hasn’t seen the finished film himself, reportedly tied to a request that he sign an NDA.

Pattinson plays him without much interest in redeeming the man behind the camera.

The One Person Worth Rooting For

Skyler Gisondo plays the film’s aspiring actor, one of the show’s decoys, and he’s described as the only character in the film who comes off well. While Hansen is chasing a primetime hit, Gisondo’s character is chasing something smaller and more human: a SAG card, a shot at becoming a working actor.

Two Ambitions, One Collision

Primetime runs on two tracks — Hansen’s hunger to build the show into something bigger, and the decoy actor’s hunger to break into the business. Almost nobody else in the film is someone you can root for, and that tension is treated as the point rather than a flaw. The film reportedly doesn’t fully resolve what it wants to be or do, and that unresolved quality is framed as part of what makes it worth watching rather than a weakness.

Not a Procedural, and Not Trying to Be

Viewers hoping for a straightforward account of who Chris Hansen was and how the show worked won’t get that here.

Primetime is more interested in sitting in the gray areas: the internal negotiations between someone’s better instincts and worse ones. That’s a deliberate choice. Audiences looking for a straight-down-the-middle procedural drama should look elsewhere; audiences willing to sit with moral murkiness will get more out of it.

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Is Primetime based on a true story?
Yes. The film is based on a 2007 Esquire article and touches on the real fallout from To Catch a Predator, including an incident connected to a man’s death tied to one of the show’s stings.

Who plays the lead in Primetime?
Robert Pattinson plays Chris Hansen, the host of the show being dramatized, with Lance Oppenheim directing.

Is Primetime a straightforward drama about Chris Hansen?
No. The film isn’t a procedural account of the show — it focuses on the ambiguity and competing ambitions of the people who made it, including Hansen.

Conclusion and CTA (68 words)

Primetime isn’t built for a tidy verdict on Chris Hansen or the show that made him famous. It’s built for people willing to sit with characters who never fully reckon with what they did — and debate it with a friend for a week afterward. If that’s the kind of film experience you’re after, it delivers. If you want something you can watch straight through without chewing on it later, this isn’t it.