“You see how this looks, right?” (Chris Hansen)
If you didn’t recognize the title, it’s a direct reference to Chris Hansen, the host of Dateline NBC’s “How to Catch a Predator” from 2004–2007.
And on Friday, Sept. 25, Robert Pattinson debuted as Chris Hansen in theaters.
The film received a 93% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes as read in Forbes. Pattinson’s performance is widely praised, capturing the essence of Chris Hansen in both his voice and mannerisms.
The show, as the name suggests, sought to catch predatory adult males through hidden cameras and sting operations. Dateline NBC partnered with watchdog group “Perverted Justice” to locate and identify predators through online chatrooms.
On the actual crime scene, decoy adult actors were used, imitating children’s voices and mannerisms to lure suspected predators into confrontation with Hansen and legal authority.
A typical confrontation entailed Hansen reading chat logs from suspected predators, integrating concrete evidence with interrogation tactics to produce confessions from these criminals.
The show was wildly successful. According to the BBC, each episode garnered an estimated 7 million viewers.
With such immense viewership, “How to Catch a Predator” competed for time slots with ABC’s highly coveted “Lost.” This contention is explored in the A24 film.
For a program whose premise was to combat crime, Dateline NBC faced immense controversy.
Viewers questioned the ethical implications of Hansen and his crew’s actions, with the ultimate catalyst being the 2006 sting operation that ended in suicide.
Louis William “Bill” Conradt served as an assistant District Attorney in Texas. He also became a prime target for Hansen and crew.
As written in A&E, Conradt was identified as messaging sexual and explicit content to a Perverted Justice volunteer who posed as a thirteen-year-old boy.
The operation escalated when Conradt failed to arrive at the decoy house. It outline a chase to his personal home, with an assembled crew of police officers and cameramen arriving on the scene with search and arrest warrants.
A gunshot rang, and the assembled crew opened the door of the home to discover a dead Bill Conradt.
Conradt’s sister sued Dateline NBC for $105 million following his death, and BBC details that this suit was settled out of court.
In this pursuit of justice, Hansen and the show’s morality is questioned.
Was the motivation of the show solely to rid the world of monsters? Or was it to cross boundaries in the name of increasing viewership?