Snitch: Movie Review

Snitch: Movie Review

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Barry Pepper, Susan Sarandon, Benjamin Bratt, Jon Bernthal
Director: Ric Roman Waugh

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson stars in a dramatic role for a change in this film, inspired by true events.

He plays construction boss, John Matthews, a good family man who cares for his workforce as well as his two families. So, when his estranged son Jason is arrested on suspected drug smuggling charges, he's forced to enter the seedy world of drugs and drug dealing to try and get him off a long jail sentence.

But John decides (with a little help from Susan Sarandon's Joanne Keeghan, who's trying to get elected to senate) that the best way would be to help try and bust a drugs cartel. To that end, he befriends one of his workers Daniel (Bernthal of The Walking Dead fame) because he's done time for drugs trafficking but is now trying to go clean.

Daniel gets John an introduction into the world of the cartels, and with the FBI and Mexican druglords closing in, the stakes are incredibly high...

Snitch is at times, like watching a more Hollywoodised version of an episode of The Wire, with a surprisingly subtle performance from the man you've come to know as The Rock. A sincere and earnest performance means a bit more presence this time around.

But its message of the horrors of drugs on a white middle-class family is somewhat of a muddle and an unsurprising take on the whole thing. With moments such as John Matthews having to Wiki Drug Cartel to find out more (as if anyone doesn't know what the cartels are, what they do and how they operate), there's a level of nonsense which takes place that's just about acceptable. Throw in the fact that Matthews feels guilty about being a post divorce absentee father and so concocts and executes a plan which leads him to try to deliver the big kahunas in the drug trade, and you've got a story which just about keeps its credibility intact thanks to taut direction and a dialled down Dwayne.

Barry Pepper, with his Billy Goats gruff goatee adds solid support as an undercover DEA agent worrying for the safety of his charge; and Sarandon is all tart ambition and one dimension as a wannabe elected senator, who's only concerned with ensuring that the capture takes place to secure her place in power. The Walking Dead's Jon Berthal seriously impresses as the co-worker of Matthews, whose shady past puts him squarely back where he doesn't want to be after trying to leave drugs behind.

An obligatory car chase scene involving a truck is inevitable but well played as the shoot out heads to the freeway in the film's final act, but despite that, Snitch manages to conceive and execute a morally grey story which is watchable, workmanlike and well acted. It's just a shame the message of drugs being bad, yo, is lost thanks to its ham-fisted and ultimately predictable execution.

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