Sundance Review: Jakub Piatek’s hostage thriller ‘Prime Time’ doesn’t break new ground but features a star-making turn from Bartosz Bielenia

On the face of it, the new film Prime Time, from Polish director Jakub Piatek, premiering at Sundance Film Festival, has all the makings of a powerfully-tense drama about a lone gunman who takes over a television studio on New Year’s Eve, 1999, but the execution never fully reaches expectation.

The set-up is ideal: on the brink of a new millennium, the world is already on edge with anticipation, excitement and paranoia about crossing the threshold to a new era, unsure of how computers will react, if any systems will collapse, or even if the world will just grind to a halt. It is on this night that Sebastian, played by Bartosz Bielenia, decides to take over the local television studio, armed with a pistol and taking two hostages. As panic sets in, the SWAT team is called and the production room does its best to keep Sebastian calm, but he only wants one thing: for the cameras to be turned on, so he can broadcast a message to the world. 

We’ve seen this premise before, and Prime Time certainly hits very familiar beats in the beginning, but, before too long, standard tropes are thrown out the door. Instead of a crazed madman, Sebastian appears to be a calm, intelligent young man and the powers that be who are brought in to handle the situation only make things worse with their general incompetence. Nobody seems to know who is in charge of dealing with Sebastian, what to offer him, or even what the plan of attack is. As for his part, Sebastian seems just as unsure of what to do once he has his moment, but the police’s confusion seems to only embolden him, as he digs in deeper.

After a while, we’ve been so caught up in the drama of the siege that we realize we don’t even really know what Sebastian wants. And it is in this search for clarity in this character that the film becomes something else. Through Sebastian’s interactions with everyone from the hostages to the people in his life to the police, a picture of who he is starts to emerge, and we begin to understand why he is there. The audience is allowed to piece together for themselves what drove this man to be at this place at this moment, and the beauty of the unknown is that two different viewers might come to two absolutely different conclusions about Sebastian’s motives, a neat trick that keeps you completely engaged.

Also subverting traditional expectations of the genre is Sebastian’s relationships with the hostages. Television personality Mira Kryle, played by Magdalena Poplawska, who was on air at the time of Sebastian’s takeover, and studio guard he overpowers in order to gain entry, played by Andrzej Klak, are the only ones left alone with Sebastian when he storms into the crowded studio brandishing his gun, as everyone else flees to safety. While there are some familiar beats with the interactions with the hostages, each individual’s true nature is revealed through the tension, and there is a clear intention on the part of the screenwriters to put each character on a level playing field while each one being fully aware that, outside of this situation, they would never even cross paths or acknowledge each other. It’s a bizarre Breakfast Club-type approach that weirdly works. 

But while I appreciated not being spoon-fed my emotional cues, the lack of clarity of the situation and Sebastian’s true motives causes the story, which starts out with such energy and promise, to grind to a halt about three-quarters of the way through when the script just runs out of ideas. The frustrating final act feels rushed and clumsy, an insult to the incredibly effective performance by Bielenia, who is the only reason this film works as much as it does. His wounded yet proud Sebastian is hanging on by a thread, but carries an inner strength and self-assuredness that has obviously been misunderstood or simply never seen his whole life. Bielenia given a dimension and a compassion to his character that brings the audience over to his side, even if we have no idea why.

Overall, Prime Time can’t reach its own potential, but it does manage to take a well-worn premise and make it engaging, carried by a star-making performance by an actor who we all should have on our radar. 

This review is from the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Image courtesy of Tomek Kaczor / Sundance Institute.