Snitch (2013)

Dave’s 3-Word Review:
Repetitive but Simple

Some call him “The Rock” while others call him Dwayne Johnson. Either way, you better bet that people know who the man is. As most of you know, Dwayne Johnson began his career in professional wrestling and has since been in the film industry for several years, starting with The Mummy Returns (2001). Since then, Johnson has starred in multiple films in a career that can be compared to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s. Even his critic ratings can be compared to the Governator. However, lately Johnson has been proving his worth in the industry, and doing a remarkable job at shedding his wrestling alias. A good example at his exemplary work is in Snitch.

When his son gets nabbed by the boys in blue for possession of narcotics with intent to sell, John Matthews (Dwayne Johnson) realizes that it’s all a misunderstanding. Yes, his son made a mistake and got in with the wrong crowd, and yes, he touched what he wasn’t supposed to out of pure curiosity. As it turns out, curiosity truly did kill the cat, because it landed him in prison for a decade, and to lessen the sentence, John decides to help the DEA capture a dangerous drug cartel leader by going undercover as a drug dealer.

The plot to this film is nothing if not simplistic. It is your basic snowball effect where one bad decision leads to the next, getting worse and worse until you are between a rock and a hard place. It’s Mission: Impossible as far as true stories go…well at least it claims to be based on true events. The truth in this film may just be prison sentence statistics. Actual true stories in film are getting harder and harder to come by these days. What you do have in this film is a hero – John Matthews, with a solid goal, going up against the impossible – all for his son. Even a drunken one-armed monkey could understand the plot, and this time around…that’s absolutely fine. Sometimes it’s better to keep things simple and not go over-the-top.

This is clearly one of Dwayne Johnson’s better performances, and many other critics would even say his best performance yet. There were indeed scenes where the Rock had to give in to different emotions, and he does a decent job at doing that. Then, of course there are the other actors that also really put on a strong performance that really showcases their talents. The acting was never the issue when it came down to how well this film delivered its message, it faltered more with length and repetition.

What I mean by length and repetition is that the movie, while not incredibly long, did feel much longer by using scenes that seem to repeat. Fake drug deal, talk to DEA, another fake drug deal, talk to DEA again, rinse repeat. You could literally go to the bathroom or change your laundry load while the film played and not really miss anything super important. You still get the point of the film, because quite simply put, the movie is, again, really simplistic. A good movie should really engage the audience enough to want to pause the movie to do routine chores, but for some reason or another, this film seemed to lack this. I believe that was a major downfall for this film.

It’s actually a decent movie put together pretty well, it doesn’t take rocket science to understand either. It’s not your typical Dwayne Johnson action flick, because it does have some heart to it. The father/son angle shows that people in our world aren’t all bad, we do have love, and this also showed what we are willing to do to keep the love strong. It’s not the best movie in the world, but it is far from the worst.

Check out Snitch for yourself, as it came to DVD and Blu-Ray today, Jun. 11!