Primetime: a Controversial Look at Journalism Versus Entertainment [review]
Lance Oppenheimer creates a unique and stylized biopic that poses hard hitting questions
The year is 2006, what starts as a small segment on Dateline NBC as a story about adults talking to children online, becomes a recurring television show titled To Catch a Predator. While the show was doing the biggest thing on television, it was not without controversy. The show was hit with hundreds of criticisms about its shady methods, the difficult discussions it created, and the true moral behind the show.
The show ended in December 2007 after the show aired its largest and most controversial episode to date. The episode called into discussion whether or not the show had any right to do what it was doing. While its goal may have been a righteous one, it is debated on whether or not the show continued to do that. After the show’s cancellation, Esquire released an article titled “Tonight On Dateline, This Man Will Die”. discussing how the show’s obsession with entertainment led to it sacrificing its actual journalism.
Review
Primetime is tense, creative, and thought provoking. It has amazing visuals, acting, and directing. It's controversial but doesn't force the audience to take a side, but forces you to sit with the discomfort of the gray area between good and bad.
The film takes a dramatized approach to the behind the scenes events and depicts them in a way which is not entirely accurate, but creates a more engaging and thought provoking idea. The film’s visuals are by far the most unique aspect, with it creating an unsettling and symbolic world for these characters to exist in. The film is colored with heavy use of blues and greens to create an off-putting look to the events. The colors almost give the audience a look into Hansen’s mind as its only colored in this way during the dramatized version of events. This is helped by the editing taking a sporadic and fast editing style that gives you constant blink and you’ll miss it moments, but gives the audience and actors time to breathe.
The cast is highlighted as being one of the highest parts of the movie. Pattinson, Weaver, and Gisondo all do an exceptional job at portraying the complex minds behind the show. Pattinson especially does an outstanding job, with this being a role that hopefully leads to some sort of nomination for him.
The film’s story will be a controversial one, as it asks the audience to not just view the world in black and white, but to accept all sorts of grays. It questions whether Hansen was the man for the job. It asks the audience to look at the moral dilemma in a way that’s deeper. To question whether journalistic integrity can be sacrificed for entertainment value? Is bigger better? It asks the audience to look at the question of if you are exposing a problem, how far is it okay to go? And the biggest question it asks, is Reality TV Journalism is predatory in its own way?
