Film Review by Collin Chua

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson still remains best known for his time in professional wrestling, where he was (and is) a huge star. However, Johnson has managed to parley his physique, charisma and stage presence into a quite serviceable film career, with roles in films such as Fast & Furious 6, Tooth Fairy, and Race to Witch Mountain.

His image is plastered all over the marketing for this film, and it’s a little misleading. Johnson is, of course, an action star—one who quite capable of providing a smartly measured dose of campy comedy with his physicality. Snitch, however, is not an action film—and therein lies both its appeal and its flaw.

Snitch is a crime drama, with elements of thriller thrown in. The pace is measured, deliberate, and its bravado is that Johnson has been cast in a role that steps out from his established comfort zone as ‘action star’, and where he is asked to push beyond the boundaries of the acting chops he has previously been called upon to display.

The film’s premise is based on the harsh reality of the mandatory minimum sentencing laws for federal drug offenders in the US. It’s a system that’s been criticised for unfairly putting away first-time, small-time offenders for a very long time, while the big fish largely get away. And those big players who actually are caught, frequently trade names from their web of connections for lower sentences.

Johnson plays John Matthews, a man who runs a construction/haulage company, and who has done very well for himself. But his success has come at a price, and he is largely estranged from his former wife and 18-year-old son, Jason. But his son foolishly agrees to receive a package of drugs on behalf of a friend, and is busted for drug trafficking; now Jason faces a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 10 years.

Desperate, John draws on his business connections to meet with a pragmatic, politically-minded Federal Prosecutor, Joanne Keeghan (Sarandon), and he ends up making a deal—he will help the federal investigators and police to make some significant arrests in the drug underworld, in exchange for a lighter sentence for his son.

But John doesn’t actually have any drug connections. He finds a company employee, Daniel James (Bernthal), an ex-con with two narcotics convictions to his name, who is now trying to take the straight path in life. They find themselves getting in deep very quickly, leading to an eventual encounter with ‘El Topo’ (Bratt), the key figure in a drug cartel.

The best performance clearly belongs to Jon Bernthal as James, the ex-con trying hard to make the right choices in a difficult life. While Johnson’s performance is easily one of the best of his acting career, the problem is that there are still patches in the film where his role as an ordinary man with ordinary fears and anxieties, in over his head, strains our incredulity.

And in the end, the relatively restrained action set piece with which Snitch concludes, comes across like the punctuation mark to a filmmaking endeavor that tries hard, and should be commended—but which ultimately falls just a little short.

Directed by: Ric Roman Waugh
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Jon Bernthal, Susan Sarandon, Benjamin Bratt
Rating: M15
Runtime: 95 minutes
Reviewer Rating: 3/5
Release Date: May 16