Director: Ric Roman Waugh
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Film Pulse Score: 4.5/10
Dwayne Johnson is an actor who historically hasn’t been given a lot of range. His roles mostly consist of action flicks or family films, with little deviation in between. With Snitch, he seemed to be attempting to branch out into a more serious drama, however this is not the role for him to successfully do that. Though it wasn’t his fault, the film suffers greatly on a variety of levels with Johnson being miscast as simply one of the missteps.
After The Rock’s son is caught accepting a box full of MDMA by the feds, he immediately ends up in jail facing a 10-year prison sentence unless he rolls on another drug dealer. The problem is he doesn’t know any drug dealers as he was simply accepting the package for a friend. After persuading the state prosecutor (Susan Sarandon), a deal is struck and The Rock begins to set up the drug dealers in place of his son.
The problems with this film happen early, and never seem to let up till the end. It’s a movie that doesn’t know what it wants to be. On one hand, there’s the social commentary aspect that explores Mandatory Minimum Sentencing laws and on the other, we have a standard run and gun action flick. More often than not, Snitch goes the route of serious drama, but drags so much that it just feels like a chore rather than something compelling.
The flat dramatic elements are what lead to the next serious problem, the role of The Rock himself. It’s understandable that he would want to tap into more dramatic roles, and I certainly think he has the ability, but this particular character would be more believable and better suited for someone else. John Matthews is a supposed to be just a normal everyday guy who suddenly has to put himself in a very dangerous situation. Several times throughout the film he shows that he’s way out of his element and he never throws one punch even though he’s a giant compared to everyone else. This all felt very awkward and made me think of how more effective this film would have been if someone who wasn’t the WWE world champion was the protagonist.
That’s not to say Snitch was completely devoid of action, although it may well have been. All the action set pieces felt forced, generic, and completely unnecessary to the film. That being said, if they were omitted completely I probably wouldn’t have been able to stay awake for the whole thing.
Overall, it’s an interesting concept and it came close to being something substantial, but ultimately it just fell flat. The theatrical action elements detracted from the dramatic moments and those moments weren’t interesting enough to carry the movie. There’s also a blurb at the end of the film that tries to push its message further, but again, that feels shoehorned in and doesn’t fit. Also, what was the deal with Barry Pepper’s beard?
