I caught a few episodes of “To Catch a Predator” during its run from 2004 to 2007 as a part of Dateline NBC news. It struck me as a dystopian case of law enforcement merging with the corporate entertainment complex that shapes our perception of life, not far removed from the blood sport TV that was satirized in “Robocop” years earlier. But it does grab you, as sick and reckless things tend to do. We crave atrocity from a safe distance.
Even the groundbreaking law enforcement-as-“Candid Camera”-stunt “Cops” didn’t quite have the singular creepiness of “To Catch a Predator,” which pivoted on host Chris Hansen meting out justice to suspected pedophiles. The show had ‘decoys’ — very young adults posing as children — entrap men into visiting houses for the promise of underage sex, after staff members had been priming the men with taboo flirting online. As the guys settle into a home for a rendezvous, in for a talk pops Hansen, who more or less pretends that he’s got jurisdiction and authority, before a SWAT team nails the offender.
Hansen is charismatic in an old-school TV news way. Think of the type that was satirized by William Hurt in “Broadcast News:” 50% hunk and a quarter each of game show host and reporter, united by threads of righteous integrity. Hansen is remarkably likeable, all things considered; you sense that he believes in what he’s doing, and his low-key earnestness has a way of (insidiously) cleansing one’s prurient draw to the material.
After all, “To Catch a Predator” is humiliation TV, with pedophiles as the target because they are the most loathed portion of society; their reputation is meant to lower our standards for vigilantism. We are here less for justice than to witness that decisive crack in a man’s face as he realizes in real time that his monstrous hunger has destroyed him.
David Osit’s “Predators” is a forceful examination of the illicit thrills in which shows like “To Catch a Predator” traffic. Osit is not interested in scolding Hansen or admirers of the show, and he’s certainly not looking to sentimentalize pedophilia. He manages to project a kind of common-sense empathy, suggesting that the evil of pedophilia does not condone entrapment, illegal collusion with law enforcement agencies, and paying adults who are barely outside of childhood themselves to serve as bait.
Osit even critiques his own film, as “Predators” inevitably offers the same cathartic excitement of the chase that “To Catch a Predator” did, and it similarly sanitizes that excitement with a suggestion of moral high-mindedness. You can have your cake and eat it too, ruing the dangerousness of “To Catch a Predator” while grooving to its set pieces. “Predators” opens with split-screen sequences from the show, which remind you why it was so popular. It allows you to feel as if you’re approaching the devil, with Hansen swooping in to offer a sense of closure. Frustrated by real life’s ambiguity and unfairness, we can tune in to see justice, big and simple.
Osit allows the show’s action scenes and swift prosecutions to jolt us, and then proceeds to dig up the bugs living under the illusion of swiftness and certainty. There are interviews here with police officers who worked on the series and with some of the now middle-aged decoys. The show was inevitably edited in a smash-and-grab manner that ironed out textures that were inconvenient to cheering a lynch mob. Osit watches raw footage with the police officers, in which many of the captured men express remorse and ask for help. More than one officer of the law, most of them hard-nosed traditional law-and-order types, open up and suggest that perhaps these men can be rehabilitated.
The raw footage captures the humanity of the suspected pedophiles. Their hunger is awful, but they are pathetic, the sort of dweebs and outcasts that online culture is so adept at bringing to a breaking point. Empathy with what disgusts us is uncomfortable, of course, hence the appeal of “To Catch a Predator” and action movies in which criminals are treated as organic skeet. But closing our circuitry to empathy can be the beginning of fascism, such as the footage here of police officers taking directions from the TV producers. As “Predators” reminds us, many of these cases were thrown out of court.
Osit isn’t telling us much that we don’t know — the show was controversial in its day. Even for the less self-conscious early aughts, “To Catch a Predator” felt insane. It’s worth repeating that college-aged adults were used as bait to draw pedophiles into a snare, and that Hansen could be seen yucking it up with late-night talk show hosts who have since reinvented themselves as beacons of integrity. (As a Gen X’er who remembers his “Man Show” days, it is hilarious to me that Jimmy Kimmel is now taken seriously.)
It’s the tone of “Predators” that is distinctively powerful, especially in the expanding realm of TV crime. The film is soulful, anguished. It moves slower than most crime-driven docs, as Osit wants you to feel the uncertainty of the people in front of his camera. Osit doesn’t look for ‘gotcha!’ moments as an interviewer, even when he’s talking to someone whose actions concern him, such as a Hansen copycat who bends the law even more than “To Catch a Predator” and who has a catchphrase that is too absurd to ruin.
Osit gradually enters into the film himself, particularly when he interviews Hansen. A survivor himself, Osit was drawn towards “To Catch a Predator” because he wanted to know what emotionally drove the pedophiles, which is not what the show with its flashy candid-camera pacing valued. Hansen, still making a living in the crime reporting business, is a good sport. He isn’t glib, and he seems to take Osit’s concerns with the show seriously. But for Hansen the action seems to be the juice, and, of course, his living, while Osit seeks the existential relief of an explanation for evil. The very point of “Predators,” with its empathy for survivors and monsters alike, is that such relief does not exist. Anyone who claims that it does is trying to sell you something.
Jay Duplass’ “The Baltimorons” has an unkempt shagginess that grows quite appealing. I wasn’t sure at first—it could’ve gone either way. The uncertainty stems from the central character Cliff, who is played by the movie’s co-writer, Michael Strassner, an actor who has a way of flipping awkward moments on their head into gestures of grace. Just when you think you’re stuck in another boutique cringe comedy, Strassner and Duplass find other notes. This movie has soft spots, but it’s also beautiful and generous.
Cliff is a Baltimore man-child, a failed comic on the verge of maybe landing a real job. He’s engaged to Brittany (Olivia Luccardi), who is encouraging his move into an adult realm, particularly his sobriety, which is now six months deep. Duplass sets all that up effortlessly, and Strassner’s performance fills in the space between the lines. We are allowed to know that this tormented bear of a man, with a reserve of vulnerability that he hides behind extroversion — an astute, paradoxical detail that brings to mind John Candy’s performance in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” — is not ready to settle down yet.
Most of the movie is set on Christmas Eve, when Cliff finds a way to barely see Brittany or her family. Going to a dentist to deal with a freak accident, he spirits said dentist, Didi (Liz Larsen), off into a series of absurdist adventures that gradually coalesce into a romance. This is a comic Christmas romance that is not populated by the scrubbed and buff actors who appear in hundreds of streaming holiday movies each year. They are everyday people, who wrestle with jobs and family and have a half hour to get ready before leaving the house each morning. Modern cinema could use more of these people.
The movie has a lovely, melancholic holiday atmosphere, with vivid Baltimore locations, a few of which are strikingly reminiscent of Carytown and the Fan. The cinematography has a down-home earthiness, with vibrant colors that hint at the sense of possibility, and of vulnerability, that animates the holidays. Jay Duplass has been making movies with his brother Mark, a prominent actor, for many years now, likeable movies that were often lumped under the early aughts “mumblecore” movement. “The Baltimorons,” with its unusual blend of comedy and poignancy and oddness, suggests a leap forward.
“Predators” begins streaming on Paramount + on Dec. 8, while “The Baltimorons” can be found on AMC+.
