Biopics seem to be all the rage these days and always become more frequent heading towards the Oscar season. Here, we have two different biopics that seem to be heading in the same direction, attempting to headline their main star into a Best Actor nomination. Primetime and Digger have both came out around the same time, the former focusing on the real life of Chris Hansen, and the latter focusing on a fictional character but playing with many of the tropes of the biopic. These two films make for a excellent paired review, so follow as we dive deeper into both.
Primetime
Robert Pattinson has had one hell of a year on the big screen, from hits like the Odyssey and The Drama, and already posed for a fourth big screen venture in Dune: Part Three in December. One of his most surprising choices this year has been starring as Chris Hansen in Primetime, a fictionalized depiction of the rise of Hansen’s show, To Catch A Predator. To Catch A Predator was a vastly popular series on Dateline NBC that ran from 2004 to 2007, featuring host Chris Hansen, catching child predators in sting operations, and filming the reactions of the predators and their arrest. This film mainly focuses on the rise of the show, as it enters a new timeslot and the thrill Hansen faced in trying to one-up himself, which soon lead to a botched sting operation and the suicide of Bill Conradt, an assistant district attorney. This led to the end of the show, with the show being announced to be cancelled in 2008.
The one thing that will be heavily debated around this film is how it depicts both the predators and Hansen himself, with the film depicting both as typical film antagonists. Some could view Hansen as a hero for his role in the show, going out of his way to take predators off the streets and exposing them to the public, but this film offers a more layered look at him. Hansen is depicted as someone who is willing to do anything to achieve his goals and claim the face he is promised. He gets giddy at what is happening on his show, exposing his performative justice and his pursuit of fame over punishing the people he is basing his show around. It is a criticism of the entire television industry, and especially the shows inspired by To Catch a Predator that would come out in the years to come, shows that felt like they had some sort of moral superiority to the people they were publicly ridiculing, ruining people’s lives in an attempt to gain more views and money, and in not trying to protect the children at all.
Pattinson’s performance as Hansen is haunting, he disappears behind the pitch perfect voice inflections, and the sinister stares. It is truly a career best performance, after many such career best performances from roles in the Lighthouse, Good Time and The Batman. Skyler Gisondo and Meritt Wever deliver excellent supporting performances, with these central three roles pairing nicely with the beautiful look of Lance Oppenheim’s film. There is a great home-movie look to the whole film, it looks like the type of content it is criticising, there is a sleaziness to the entire thing. Oppenheim has truly delivered an experimentative look at one of TV’s biggest personas, developing a story that just keeps making you increasingly uncomfortable.
Digger
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has delivered two smashing Oscar favourites in the 2010s, namely Birdman and The Revenant, and this year finally returned the director back to the big screen. Paired with Tom Cruise as producer and the main star, Digger follows the titular character, Digger Rockwell, an oil magnate who causes an ecological disaster and must defend his own image, and attempt to dig the word back out of the problem he caused. The film composes itself as a satirical black comedy, and the film boils to a late-game twist that has been hidden across the entire marketing and cannot be discussed in this review but does change the entire perception of the film. Digger has been a polarising film for sure, mixing critics and regular audiences, and is going to be on the biggest box office flops of the decade, potentially losing the studio up to 200 million when all is said and done, and that is a real shame with how great the film truly is.
The film is of course a scathing look at America’s current political climate, with each of the main characters being purely unlikeable buffoons, who have got where they are from money and power and nothing else. John Goodman’s character is clearly a spoof of Trump, and you could read Digger as a composition of various industrial giants who have took a massive hand in keeping presidents in power. It takes a massive jab at industrial powers owning our government, how each part of our way of life is sold to us and we don’t do anything about it, and how we would not be able to exist without all of it. What the film really boils down to is even more interesting however, as the late game twist makes the film a spoof of itself, exposing the unnecessary nature of these performative films that seek to expose awful people in our lifetime. These films seek to explore true horrors as they mock and dramatize these people, but they mean nothing, an audience will walk out of these films and learn nothing, be inspired to do nothing and just return to their lives. It is an incredibly complex film that is hilariously anti-itself, no wonder it is so critically mixed.
The comedy elements of this film will not be for everyone, it is incredibly dry and satirical but if the comedy is up your alley, it is going to be a riveting laugh from start to finish. John Goodman delivers one of the most hilarious performances of the year, the man’s facial expressions are second to none. Riz Ahmed is a strong supporting actor as well, and of course Tom Cruise comes away with the performance of the movie. It is strange to see Cruise playing so against type after all these years of Mission Impossible films, but here he is a cunning and hilarious, evil man, and the film never lets up in making him truly detestable. There is a particular long monologue sequence which will stand as one of the best single sequences in a film all year. His performance is paired beautifully by the excellent set décor across the entire film, it is a wonderfully inventive movie to look at, with its stage play-like backdrops and its very contained locations. Inarritu has delivered one of the finest movies of the year, a satirical look at itself, it is a brave and unique movie, one that is destined to become a cult classic in years to come.
Leave a Reply