“Inspired by true events” — a phrase that implies the greatest possible distance between something that actually happened and what’s about to happen on screen — Snitch tries to be two movies at once.
One is an earnest social drama about the cruel, arbitrary nature of mandatory minimum sentences for first-time drug offenders. The other is an action movie starring Dwayne Johnson, the sometime wrestler popularly known under his nom de headlock, The Rock. Rather than attempting to reconcile these two very different agendas, co-writer and director Ric Roman Waugh opts instead for a cake-and-eat-it approach that compromises Snitch from both ends.
Whatever was relatable and down-to-earth about a father doing everything possible to save his son from injustice is obliterated by a succession of big shoot-’em-up set pieces that no normal dad could expect to survive. And whatever lizard-brain fun might have been had in watching Johnson do battle against a drug cartel is weakened by the occasional hard tug at the social conscience. The film winds up divided against itself.
As John Matthews, the owner and operator of a small construction business, Johnson plays a self-starter whose belief in toughness and discipline doesn’t resonate with his 18-year-old son Jason (Rafi Gavron). When Jason gets coerced into accepting a drug shipment that’s being monitored by the feds, the quantity of drugs in the package requires a judge to give him a 10-year sentence, despite his otherwise clean record. His only chance to reduce the sentence is to set up a friend or lead the authorities to a bigger fish, which he is, respectively, unwilling and unable to do.
“Into this situation charges John, eager to redeem himself to the son he’s been neglecting in favor of a new wife and family. John manages to convince a federal prosecutor (Susan Sarandon) to allow him to frame a drug dealer in exchange for a lighter sentence.”