October 6, 2026
It was 2006. Dateline NBC had a sensational series called "To Catch a Predator" starring journalist Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson). This show planned and executed entrapment operations against pedophiles on camera for broadcast on TV. Hansen and his crew entered the scene to confront the pervert and have them arrested on the spot. The show turned out to be a very big hit, so NBC bosses decided to move it to air on primetime at 9:30 pm, even putting it on the same timeslot to compete with ABC's hit series "Lost."
Hansen and his producer Andie Bender (Merritt Wever) worked with Xavier Von Erck (Matthew Maher) who led a vigilante group against pedophiles called Perverted Justice. They hired young actors of legal age to act as the decoys for these pedophiles. Their original decoy was a woman named Del Harvey (Phoebe Bridgers) who can pass as girls or boys. A new recruit was Dan Plum (Skyler Gisondo) whose main incentive for getting into this show was the hope that this gig could help him earn his own Screen Actors Guild card.
This is the first narrative film directed by Lance Oppenheim, veteran documentarist at the ripe old age of 30. Based on a 2007 article on Esquire magazine "Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die" by Luke Dittrich which was adapted into a screenplay by Ajon Singh, Oppenheim was essentially also doing a documentary here, but with actors playing the parts to heighten the tension and the behind-the-scenes drama. Oppenheim often employed the four-way split screen technique to replicate the show's multi-angle coverage of the sting operations.
The topic of pedophilia is urgent for sure, but also ripe for sensationalization as far as television goes. Audiences could not resist the guilty lure of the lurid and the salacious, the scandalous and the perverse. Hansen and his group knew their goldmine was right there, ripe for the picking. Yet, with every child sex offender arrest they make, they still could pat themselves on the back and consider themselves superheroes for the invaluable service of saving kids from sexual predators who hide behind the anonymity provided by the internet.
I have never seen the actual TV show nor do I know the real Chris Hansen, but Robert Pattinson played him with a sweaty, sleazy type of energy and vibe. Pattinson was so into his role that those scenes he had convincing Skyler Gismondo's Dan to join his team was uncomfortable to watch, even more cringe-inducing than the actual pedophile scenes. It was just too bad that after his climactic fight with his big "whale," we did not exactly get a clearer picture of how this major televised conflict affected Hansen nor his show. 7/10
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