Snitch Review Movie Review

The movie entitled “Snitch” is a crime drama film directed by Rick Roman Waugh, who is a former stuntman. The movie starts off with the lead character, Johnson, who played John Matthews, who receives an unexpected call about his son. He has not seen his son, Jason, in a while and was surprised that he was being charged for possession and distribution of illegal narcotics. It is now common to see Johnson playing a family man, but not one for drama. The start of the movie introduces him as a caring father who was really concerned.
Even in the first scene, there was heavy drama. You could see the sincerity in Johnson as he really was worried about his son. Someone who Jason thought was his friend had set him up in order to save his own skin. This was so that the friend would receive a lighter punishment. Jason was looking at about ten years or more in prison. John was saddened by this news and felt that it was his fault for being an absentee father. He wanted to help his son as he feared that Jason might not make it to the end of his prison sentence alive. Johnson’s character is what first struck audiences as strange. He was a self-made man who owned an honest company. He was no CIA agent, police officer or anything. He worked a 9-5 job.
Johnson talks to everyone he knows and gets a meeting with a local lawyer, Joanne Keeghan, who is played by Susan Sarandon. She was trying to run for congress and was very active in her anti-drug campaign in hopes to get a chance at elections. However, he did not receive much help from her, as all she offered was to reduce Jason’s sentence in exchange for John to play an informant. This is when things started to get a bit off. It moved so fast to this, that the series of events did not seem as real as it could have been. For a film which claims to be fact-based, all of the events seemed too much of a coincidence.
The story gets deeper as John is introduced to a highly dangerous big-time drug dealer. The action then starts, with the plot getting more complicated along the way. John then finally captures the man whom the DEA was after. The movie ends with the son being released from jail along with statistics showing that some first-time non-violent offenders charged of drug possession or distribution get heavier punishments as compared to those who are convicted of manslaughter or even rape.
The movie is not at all what most fans would expect. Seeing that Johnson is not your usual drama actor, the film was surprisingly very heavy in drama. Johnson is more known for action thrillers with heavy gun fire, big explosions and car pile ups. His other side also shows him in comedies and campy children’s movies. However, this movie was not as action-packed as most of Johnson’s other films. It was more dramatic and was fact-based. The things that happened in the movie are incidences that could actually happen in real life – not exaggerated or anything like that. As the film makers did say, the film was inspired by true events. This movie was more low-key and not as testosterone-filled. It is not enough to be labeled as an action film and falls under the ranks of being a drama or a thriller.
The real-world stakes presented in the movie were done in a way where audience could feel the tension. However, the man chosen to play the family-man and concerned father was a bit more buff than how he played his role. Though the storyline was said to be something that is fact-based and true-to-life, the series of events that lead John to speak with someone who was so connected is not always something that could happen. He was able to get a meeting with the lawyer, who happened to run an anti-drug campaign without much of a struggle. He was also given a deal pretty fast. This deal was also quite big. For a government agency to put a regular working man in that kind of position is not as real as the movie claims it could be. What were the chances of the father of an innocently convicted your man to be as buff, built and weapon savvy as The Rock?
The movie is just surprisingly dramatic and at times slow. It was not as action-packed as people would have hoped. It did bring a great storyline which was easy to follow and flowed quite well. The movie did benefit from a great lineup, Susan Sarandon, player her part well as always. There were very little scenes that would classify this movie as an action flick. Those who love seeing The Rock play the big man, beating down villains might be disappointed to find that this movie is more dramatic than it leads off. The movie poster even suggests that this film is drama – with the built Dwayn Johnson in the foreground and a burning truck right behind him. It comes as no wonder that many people had mixed reviews about this film. Either people loved it or hated it. I would be inclined to feel neutral about it since it was a so-so kind of movie. If the cast wasn’t star-studded, it might not have carried on to its true potential. The director still did a great job at pulling the film together. The overall film was okay, and nothing too terrible can be said of it. The film did not disappoint, yet it was also not that great as compared to other movies of its kind. The action style and emotions of the movie were impressive however it was just that it is not something that many avid movie goers would expect from The Rock.