Snitch (12A) 112 mins **
Here’s a curio: a lumbering non-thriller, “inspired
by true events”, which deploys Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s brawn to wrestle
with America’s losing war on drugs. Construction boss John Matthews (Johnson)
is obliged to take extreme measures when wayward, pill-pushing son Jason (Rafi
Gavron) falls foul of draconian mandatory-minimum sentencing. Jason’s sole hope
of early release is to turn supergrass, compelling Matthews Sr. to wade
manfully into the underworld and find someone for Junior to dob in. If that
sounds absurd and convoluted, writer/director Ric Roman Waugh’s big idea is
that, yep, that’s the system, too.
There’s a better B-movie in here making the same
point in niftier time, but this frowning, mostly funless effort takes the long
way round, clogging the action with bluntly defined secondary characters. While
Dwayne’s Wiki-ing “drug cartels”, Omar from The Wire and Benjamin Bratt posture
as rival suppliers, while Barry Pepper sports a nausea-inducing beard as the
cop on Matthews’ case, and Susan Sarandon is damned in one line (“I don’t have
children”) as an ambitious stateswoman. It picks up whenever the star’s
speeding around in a truck, but otherwise proves about as exciting and
convincing as a Statham road safety campaign.
Snitch is in cinemas nationwide.
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