Snitch

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson continues his Hollywood takeover with Snitch, a film reminiscent of his early features. After the son of Johnson’s character gets arrested on drug charges, the father goes on a mission to gain leverage and shorten the teen’s sentence. This leads him to snitch on local criminals and Mexican drug cartels alike. The film is a level headed action adventure that is apparently based on true events. That fact allows for the film to get away with avoiding huge effects, explosions and other action staples.

Johnson has the ability to convince the audience that he is an average everyday family man even though he’s the size of small house. That’s acting, folks. But beyond that, he doesn’t stretch himself very much beyond a few emotional scenes with the son. Other than the lead, Susan Sarandon, Benjamin Bratt and Barry Pepper all are underutilized as flat archetypal characters. John Bernthal of “The Walking Dead” fame gives the most layered performance as a reformed convict pulled into the situation by Johnson’s character, who happens to be his boss. The way the actor balances the different facets of the character’s personality is fun to watch.

Since Snitch plays out with a strong sense of realism, it hits peaks and valleys in its pacing. Surprisingly that doesn’t necessarily correspond to the action. In fact, some simple conversations are just as exciting as the final highway showdown. The script takes a strong stance against minimum sentencing laws for drug offenders including a small write up before the credits. But even though the film highlights an instance where the rule punishes a teenager for a dumb mistake, the kid had a giant bag full of ecstasy. That’s a crime. So in this instance, the plot’s attempt to show a government flaw isn’t universally accepted enough to point out so blatantly.

Each film earns either zero, a half or a full arrow in five categories. The categories are Acting, Writing/Directing, Emotion, Innovation and Overall Impression. The arrows are added up to equal the full score.