Snitch – Review

Sometimes people get caught in the wrong place.  While this could be a reference to the young man in the film who gets busted on a narcotics distribution charge, it is actually referring to Dwayne Johnson.  His career has certainly come a long ways from when he was first making his transition from the WWE into becoming a legitimate film actor.  He has grown to be comfortable in both action and comedy roles.  Snitch, directed by Ric Roman Waugh, places him in a new type of role.  Instead of relying on his muscles or comedic charm, Snitch places Johnson at the center of an emotionally challenging life drama.

In Snitch, Johnson plays small business owner John Matthews.  One day he gets word that his son, who lives with his ex-wife, has been arrested and charged with distributing narcotics.  Although the son had a history of meddling with drugs, this instance was mostly just getting caught up in a messy situation.  Due to mandatory minimum laws, he was going to be sent to prison for 10 years.  The only way to reduce his sentence was to help get others arrested on drug charges.  Well, as a product of the suburbs, he didn’t have any meaningful connections that could be used.

Fearful that his son wouldn’t last 10 years in prison, Matthews takes it upon himself to help make some drug convictions.  He begins making shady connections with the hope that he’ll be able to make a big enough impact to get his son freed while also not getting killed himself.

The most surprising thing about the film is that it is extremely different from what the trailers portrayed.  Dwayne Johnson has been doing a good job starring in fast-paced action films and that’s what Snitch’s trailers depicted.  The film actually moves quite slowly.  The focus is centered on the emotional turmoil that the characters go through.

Johnson performed well enough, but the rest of the film was lacking.  The ending especially was very rushed and within the span of a few minutes all the remaining problems and loose ends just sort of magically came together.  The film’s musical score was terrible.  Even during the few action scenes the background music was super melodramatic and entirely out of place.

The point of the film was to deliver a message but the execution of that delivery was very poor.  Dwayne Johnson is the only reason why the real message isn’t to avoid it entirely.