In “Primetime,” Robert Pattinson plays Chris Hansen, host of “To Catch a Predator,” an offshoot of NBC’s “Dateline” news program in the mid-2000’s. Hansen and the show’s production team would coordinate with police to lure child predators (via Internet chatrooms where there would be no ambiguity as to their intent) to locations where they would be ambushed, first by Hansen and his cameras, then by the police. While removing child predators from society was undeniably good work, doing so in the form of a television program was morally dubious, as there was an exploitative element to broadcasting the lowest moments of the predators’ lives in the name of entertainment. Then again, if anyone deserves that kind of humiliation, it’s child predators. The debate over the righteousness of the show swirls to this day, and there’s no real “right” answer, but “Primetime” doesn’t want the viewer coming away thinking that Hansen and his team were saints.
To be clear, this isn’t the kind of movie that tries to make it seem like Hansen and his team were the real villains on “To Catch a Predator,” it never goes that far. The marks on that show were the lowest scum of…
