You all first knew him as “The Rock” from World Wrestling Entertainment: RAW television series. He has played an authority and disciplinary figure in movies such as: The Rundown, Walking Tall, The Game Plan, and Fast Five. He plays the tough, superior, aggressive, and heroic leader and always does his best to portray his character’s excellence in reaching his goal. Unfortunately, the movie Snitch was not like the others.
Dwayne Johnson plays John Matthews, the boss of his own construction material-making company and father to teenager Jason Collins, who is to be arrested for illegal drug possession by the Drug Enforcement Administration. As Jason (Rafi Gavron) is sentenced to several years in prison, the federal government agrees to shorten Jason’s time in jail in return for his cooperation in helping them catch criminals of drug distribution.
Jason refuses the danger and his father continuously asks Joanne Keeghan (Step Mom’s Susan Sarandon) to take his son’s place in catching criminals on the street. Matthews does not know the first place to start, so he picks Daniel James (The Walking Dead’s Jon Berthanal), one of his employees with a criminal history of drugs to help him. James is your typical ex-con who wants to start a new, clean life while taking care of his family.
This movie was slow to get to the climax of the story. My first impression was that his character would hit the ground running in an effort to get his son out of prison, like in “The Rock’s” other movies. I thought the protagonist put everyone who he came into contact with at his mercy, fighting groups of the drug cartel in hand-to-hand combat and shoot-outs, and proving his son’s innocence. This movie was nothing like that until the very end.
I was very disappointed after seeing this movie. Not only was the action held for the very end of the movie, but the story was also concluded very fast. Normally, in Dwayne Johnson’s movies, end his enemy’s misery solely out of justice, never revenge. In one of the scenes, Johnson goes to a random street and attempts to catch a drug dealer and fails miserably.
Johnson portrayed a character that was very ignorant about his role while working for the DEA. “The Rock” a few other movies coming out this year, and I hope they are constructed in a “hanging off the edge of your seat” kind of way.
Grade: C