Review of Snitch (2013) by Jesse O — 11 Jun 2013

This is a surprisingly good movie. Perhaps a little too long for its own good but it tells this story of this man who would do just about anything to ensure that his son won't have to go to prison for a long time for a mistake he made.

At its core, that's the story...unfortunately some of it gets muddled when you start to involve other characters and the drug cartels. Sometimes it does sort of lose its focus from what the story ends up being about.

But I did like the fact that this man would go to these lengths to protect a son that he may have neglected after his marriage to his new wife and the start of his second family, I thought this part of the film was very well done.

And it also benefits from Dwayne Johnson's best performance yet. You know, I remember when he first went into movies and how it was a big deal at the time, but there was also a lot of expectations that he would end up becoming a massive failure and a joke of an actor.

Admittedly, his first movie, The Scorpion King, wasn't any good and he wasn't good in the movie either. It's still really impressive seeing how far he has come as an actor. He won't ever win any awards for best actor or anything, but he is good, even if he has his limitations, and he has a commanding presence on-screen and he shows it here.

I was gonna say that this was his first lead role in a serious movie, but that isn't the case. Anyway the point is that he steps up to the plate and delivers the goods in this movie. He doesn't hit homerun, it's more like a triple, and a really soft one at that, because he sometimes lack the emotional depth to take this story to the next level.

He is good, and does a good job here but he isn't great is what I'm getting at. Jon Bernthal is also really good as well, it's good to see him do something that isn't so melodramatic as his character was in The Walking Dead, as an aside that Lori/Rick/Shane story-line in the second season, if you follow the series, was such soap opera bullshit, overacted and overwritten.

Anyway, the point is Jon is good here as well as this sympathetic character who's drawn back into this world he thought he'd have left behind to make a better life for his family. The action sequence near the end feels a little out of place, but it was to be expected I suppose.

It's not bad, just feels like something out of a completely different movie. I thought this movie was good, it certainly has is weaknesses but I think it is a largely entertaining flick. This is a solid rental, nothing more nothing less.