Ooooooooh, now it’s “Dwayne Johnson,” is it? Too good for “The Rock” are we? I suppose we think we’re a real actor now with subtlety and depth and shit. Oh, this performance is kinda subtle and nuanced. Crap. Thought I had something. The Artist formerly known as The Rock is no Sir Laurence Olivier, but then Larry the Knight rarely wielded a two-by-four on camera.
OK, why the Road Warrior denouement? I’m watching The Rock wield a shotgun from a truck, while wounded in the leg, no less, while drug runners in smaller cars shoot at him. Geez, all we’re missing is a fire nozzle and the guy with the mohawk. One of the endearing laws of film is steal from the classics, not the tragics. Makes you wonder, though, as Snitch is based on a real life tale, did the real life guys intend to reenact Road Warrior? Cool.
I should back up. Son of Rock, Jason Collins (Rafi Gavron) — not be confused with the basketball player – thankfully, there’s a 0% chance that 
will happen – is a standard teen suburb kid who becomes the innocent target of a drug trafficking sting. The innocent is a little too heavy here – we can see the kid hem and haw about receiving the package. He knows it’s wrong, but hey, his buddy (the one who sells Jason downriver) needs help. The package contains enough drugs to require a federally mandated ten-year date rape. We get the idea that Jason is a good kid, if a little stupid. While it’s easier to root for an innocent dupe, it’s highly unrealistic. Maybe he wasn’t a dealer, but I bet real “Jason” was a mule and had the live-forever vanity associated with his age. Do we love children less when they’re guilty? I think most of Hollywood honestly answers that question, “yes.” All I can say is some of you have never been parents.
John Matthews (Johnson) is a successful business man suddenly discovering that his estranged teenage son is gonna serve serious time. Rock don’t play that. What Rock do play involves going undercover like a narc. Now this stuff is really interesting — D.A. Joanne Keeghan (Susan Sarandon) actually sanctions undercover policework from a layman in lieu of his son doing hard time. What if he gets killed? Who takes responsibility? We can tell from moment one that Rock is in over his head. And he knows it, too, but has to keep playing the part or he’s dead. The actor letting the audience know how he feels inside, but outwardly channeling his hesitancy into insecurity of assignment — not easy acting. This is when Snitch works — when we cease seeing “The Rock”, World Wrestling tough-guy, and start seeing, “Dwayne,” a local business man who has no idea how to take down a drug lord. In the process, Dwayne/Rock/John also gets two-time loser fellow family-man employee Daniel (Jon Bernthal) involved. Snitch has a great deal to say about the boss who manipulates a straight-arrow driven employee back to a life of crime. Well, everything except the correct conclusion — that his selfish actions to spring his own son aren’t worth destroying an innocent man’s life. But it’s fair to entertain you might think otherwise were this your own child.
Ol’ Dwayne doesn’t take us for fools
His name is not all of his tools
But careful there, Slick,
In the roles that you pick,
For ‘The Rock’ is now what he mules.
Rated PG-13, 112 Minutes
D: Ric Roman Waugh
W: Justin Haythe, Ric Roman Waugh
Genre: Guess how much of this really happened?
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: DEA Agents
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Drug mules
