Predators exposed, but at what cost?

Robert Pattinson plays TV personality Chris Hansen in Primetime, a movie built around Hansen's To Catch a Predator, an NBC Dateline segment that ran through 2007. Dedicated to exposing and shaming pedophiles, Predator piled up huge ratings, even as some critics found it sleazy and exploitative. The always adventurous Pattinson becomes the wobbly centerpiece of a story that portrays Hansen as an ambitious, sometimes tormented careerist. Eager to attract viewers, Hansen pushed the taste envelope with face-to-face encounters that used decoys to attract predators and raised ethical questions about an approach some regarded as entrapment. I’m not sure the film or Pattinson gets a handle on Hansen or on a major helping of "trash" TV that patted itself on the back for exposing pedophiles, not a group that garners much, if any, public sympathy. Although underused, singer Phoebe Bridgers appears as Del, a decoy who sometimes poses as a boy to lure targets. An excellent Skyler Gisondo plays…