Primetime (2026) No Spoiler Review: A Solid Robert Pattinson Performance Stuck in a So-So Story

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Primetime (2026) gives us the Robert Pattinson weirdness we love, but the story is just so-so, and it ends up okay, nothing spectacular.

Primetime is Lance Oppenheim’s film about To Catch a Predator, with Robert Pattinson playing his own version of Chris Hansen.

My wife and I really like Robert Pattinson. I especially like him in The Lighthouse (2019) and Good Time (2017), his movie with the Safdie brothers. We also liked him in The Odyssey (2026), and yes, he’s an excellent Batman in The Batman (2022). In fact, he’s the standalone Batman, the most grounded one. We’d heard good things about this one, so we were excited to catch it, even if in the Philippines it’s only showing at SM Cinemas.

We don’t usually watch movies at SM, but we’re starting to be open to it. They have exclusive screenings and special events, like the Godzilla film fest that’s on right now. While waiting for the movie to start, I realized that ACS (Star Wax, Pride detergent, Unique toothpaste, and more) has been advertising in SM Cinemas for at least two decades. It’s a staple of watching a movie at SM. Is that good branding? Definitely not for us. Definitely not for SM Aura Director’s Club, where a ticket is more than ₱600. But hey, good for ACS.

Pattinson did give a good performance. He really leaned into his version of Chris Hansen. There was a lot of the Robert Pattinson weirdness that we love, and I’m sure audiences love it too. All in all, a good acting role for him. It was also a good performance from Skyler Gisondo as Dan Plumb, the decoy.

The story, though, is just so-so. It takes a pretty simple plot and drags it out. It runs a little under two hours, and maybe it was the recliner seats, but both of us felt a bit sleepy somewhere in the middle.

It seems to be a movie about ambition, about what people would do to reach their goals and get recognized. You can see that drive for recognition everywhere: Chris Hansen looking up to Stone Phillips (Bill Heck), Dan wanting to make it as an actor, and Andie Bender (Merritt Wever), the producer, wanting to be heard, wanted, and recognized. All of them are doing it for selfish reasons, and that sits against the purpose of their TV show. I think that’s the main contrast, the main conflict, of the movie.

My wife thinks it’s about shame. When Chris Hansen comes face-to-face with the district attorney, Bill Conradt (Alex Winter), he sees a bit of himself. That’s a fair point, and an interesting one. She also felt it was unclear what the movie was trying to say. It’s fictional, so they could have done anything with it.

There were a lot of funny moments, which was amusing until you realize how heavy the subject matter is, so that was a little weird.

All in all, it was okay. We were a bit disappointed because we were really looking forward to it, and we wanted to give it a lower score for that. But in the end, it earns an okay score. It’s a solid performance by Pattinson, just not something we’d tell people they have to see. And here, you can only catch it at SM anyway.

★★★☆☆ for both of us.

See what else we’ve been watching on Letterboxd.