Commentary: 'Primetime' and Chris Hansen deserve each other

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Set us as preferred VENICE, Italy — When Skyler Gisondo turns up in “Primetime” as “Decoy Dan” Plum, an aspiring 23-year-old actor cast to play teenage bait for an unsuspecting pedophile, the camera can’t take its eyes off him.The second trap set in director Lance Oppenheim’s lurid sweeps-sploitation drama about “To Catch a Predator” follows Gislondo’s face, most often in extreme close-up, as Dan processes what he’s gotten himself into, attempts to make small talk with the predator and finally flees off set, where he sits down, steadies himself and sheds a shaken tear.

The suspect, meanwhile, is an afterthought, or more accurately a punchline: He only truly captures the camera’s attention when he drops trou, rips the top off a canister of whipped cream and sprays.It’s an arresting formal choice, repeated from the opening sequence — that of the viral “You see how this looks, right?” moment from the trailer — to the climatic suicide of Rockwall County, Tex.

assistant district attorney Bill Conradt Jr., whose case is explored in the Esquire magazine article on which Ajon Singh’s screenplay is based.With rare exception, “Primetime” doesn’t have the guts to look its predators in the eye.

And perhaps it doesn’t need to.The film directs its most gleeful energies instead to taking “To Catch a Predator” host Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson) down a peg.

The former “Dateline NBC” correspondent, who turned a newsmagazine segment about men soliciting teens for sex online into a hidden-camera sensation in the mid-aughts, comes off here as a self-serious showboat who’s mistaken tabloid trash for accountability journalism.(As one audio technician complains, “Guy thinks he’s f— Mike Wallace.”) It’s not just that stentorian voice, either.

Envy of “Dateline” co-anchor Stone...