Review of Snitch (2013) by Alexproductions — 06 Sep 2013

After hearing little about Snitch in the media, I wasn't sure if this was going to be a movie worth two hours of my life. As I was typing this review, I learned that the movie only made 42 million dollars in the box office. I was rather surprised by this considering Grown Ups pulled in a whopping roughly seven and a half times more than that. (300 Million).

Snitch began showing John Matthews' (Dwayne Johnson) son, Jason Collins,(Rafi Gavron) who is agreeing to get shipped some illegal drugs and "hold them" until his friend can come pick them up. When the package comes, he opens it and then sees a tracker in the bottom of the box. When cops arrive he is already running away and then gets captured and goes into custody. By this time I already liked the movie because we learned what the movie was about and the problem that would try to be fixed, within the first ten minutes of the film. After meeting federal prosecutor, Caroline Keeghan (Susan Sarandon), John learns that he can try to bust other drug dealers to reduce his son’s sentence.

After getting beaten up, money stolen, and his truck almost hijacked all on the first try, he goes back to meet with Keeghan. John meets with a former gang member Daniel, who works for him at his company. Daniel agrees to help and they go to a bad part of town to begin. They meet Malik, (Michael Kenneth Williams) who does not know he is being recorded. If he gets Malik and the drugs, she will reduce Jason's sentence to two years, one year suspended. Daniel thinks this who thing is real and does not recognize John's agents trailing them.

After John gets home for the night he has a stressful conversation with his wife Analisa. John says that "Every move I make, or don't make, Jason will have to live with for the next ten years of his life." I thought this was the most powerful part of the movie. I thought about this quote for a while and think it was very important. John basically said that if he doesn't do anything, his son will be in prison for ten years of his life. If he does do something, though he is risking his life, he is helping his son get out faster. What John does impacts how Jason's life turns out. John makes an even bigger deal with Keeghan that will assure instant release of Jason with the arrest of "El Topo" and the drug money.

Without giving away the rest of the movie, though I correctly predicted how it would end, I still thought it was a solid film and was very underrated. To me, it does not make sense that an Adam Sandler comedy made so much more than a high end action thriller with a 35 million dollar budget. I thought that Dwayne's acting was top notch in this movie and he was the perfect person to play the father. I was reluctant to see Snitch but am glad I took the time and thought the film paid off.