Primetime review: No wonder Chris Hansen is furious

Running time: 110 minutes.Rated R (disturbing sexual material, graphic nudity, some violent content, and language).

In theaters Sept.25.Should Chris Hansen ever watch the trippy movie “Primetime,” about the rise and fall of his “Dateline NBC” series “To Catch a Predator” during the mid-aughts, I doubt he’ll be any less miffed by the end than he reportedly has been in the weeks since the trailer dropped.Master of disguise Robert Pattinson plays the host, who turned confronting and locking up pervs into TV popcorn entertainment, as ruthlessly ambitious and freakishly intense.

A snarling creature more so than a human, here he’s envisioned as the Gollum of network news.“To Catch a Predator,” his “precious.”This highly fictionalized, borderline disturbed version of Hansen is a crusader on two fronts.On one side benevolent, he fully believes that trapping and publicly shaming pedophiles is his sacred duty.“We’re cleansing the world of an ancient evil,” the character says with the quiet ferocity of a tiger.Many people will strongly agree with that point of view, albeit in less grandiose terms.Selfishly, he is also fighting for fame. Hansen’s internal battle echoes the chief contradiction of “To Catch a Predator” that has generated debate for 20 years — that it’s both good and bad.Yes its methods were ethically fraught (a newsman with ratings on the brain taking an overactive role in police work, producers strapping cameras to cops for action-packed shots, etc.), traumatic for its young actor “decoys” and occasionally dangerous to all.

But, hey, it brought pedos to justice, didn’t it?Beyond the core mission, Pattinson’s extremely unlikable Chris is a narcissist with a chip on his shoulder who envies the perch and popularity of his patronizing “Dateline” colleague Stone Phillips.Stone gets to report from Iraq and Afghanistan — not Fort Myers cul-de-sacs.

Hansen desires that level of power as well, and...