In 2016,
Jodie Foster set out to “bring back the grown-up summer movie” with
Money Monster, the story of a desperate young man who walks into the taping of a television show and holds the host hostage on air. The movie failed both at the box office and with critics, because it was an overwrought mess that was trying to say way too much in the space of just over two hours. While Jakub Piątek’s new film
Prime Time has a setup that’s almost identical, it succeeds where Foster’s film failed, and at just a fraction of the budget and only a 90-minute runtime by simply focusing on the story.