Primetime review – Robert Pattinson’s preening TV host hunts paedophiles but real drama proves harder to target

Venice film festival: Lance Oppenheim’s drama about controversial US reality show To Catch a Predator is unsure what it wants to say about media or morality Lance Oppenheim is the acclaimed documentary-maker who has made his feature debut with a strangely overwrought and heavy-footed drama-thriller, which for all its elaborate neon-lit atmosphere of noir danger isn’t at all sure what it wants to say about media or morality, or anything else.

The subject is the controversial top-rated US TV reality show To Catch a Predator which ran from 2004 to 2008; that title was evidently taken from the Hitchcock movie To Catch a Thief, which in turn was inspired by the phrase “Set a thief to catch a thief”.

In search of prey, the show’s researchers baited paedophiles in online chatrooms posing as children, lured them to “sting houses” where actors played underage teens on the front porch to get the abusers inside, where they can be clearly filmed expressing criminal intentions.

But before anything could happen, sonorous host Chris Hansen appeared from nowhere and confronted these cringing abusers – which made for fantastic television.

After this the cops made an arrest, and they and the state prosecutor did the heavy lifting of overseeing due process and presumably debating the merits of entrapment in court, although this obvious issue is not raised in the movie.

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