Weekly Movie Review: Snitch

-Dame Bralic Matthews 

Our number one action hero, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is back starring as well as producing his latest feature film titled Snitch. Snitch is about a middle class blue collar trucking company owner named John Matthews who goes undercover for the DEA in order to free his son from wrongly accused drug charges. The story has a grip of standout supporting cast members, including the villain we all love to hate, Michael Kenneth Williams (The Wire) who played the local sinister, street drug lord named Malik. Not to be out done, Williams had to share the supporting cast spotlight with, in my opinion, one of Television's best industry bad guys from last year, AMC's Walking Dead; better known as Shane, Jon Bernthal. Other supporting cast members that held their own were Actresses Lela Loren, who primarily makes her living on prime time hit TV shows and Nadine Velazquez (Flight).  In addition, Doris Morgado, whose career looks to be heading in the right direction with a role in an upcoming summer film featuring Denzel Washington, and fairly newcomer Kyara Campos who plays Matthew's wife.

Bernthal's character is Daniel James, an Ex-Con who was doing fine at keeping his nose clean, working hard and making an honest living by working as a laborer at Matthew's trucking company, until he is reluctantly bribed by Matthews by the sum $20,000 to introduce him to Daniel's old drug dealing connection, Mailk. Matthews's intentions are to set Mailk up for the DEA by providing his own trucks for massive shipments of Malik's drugs. After enduring a tense scene well written by Screenwriters Justin Haythe and Ric Roman Waugh, stuntman turned director, provided a well written tense scene.  Malik feels Matthews out and agrees to use Matthew's services, but not before telling him that he wants Matthews to drive the 1000 mile trip to El Paso, Texas as a test run to pick up drugs.

Before you can fully digest the "Oh Snap" factor that just kicked in, Malik pulls the "whammy" on his own boy Daniel by saying "...and you going to go with him." Daniel hesitates for a second contemplating about the implications of drug trafficking he could face. Malik, who has no empathy for Daniel's concerns, tells him that they both have two prison strikes against them, so if one goes down then they all will go down. Malik then nonchalantly gives Daniel an ultimatum which is basically, make this run like I say or he will put a bullet into Matthews "then we can pretend this conversation never happened." Not wanting that blood on his hands, Daniel makes the trek with Matthews out of state.

When the truck rolled out for El Paso, they must have taken most of all the good parts of the movie with them, because they surely did not leave it for the audience to enjoy! For a movie being directed by a former stuntman as well as featuring today's biggest action hero, the first real action scene of the movie was pretty stunt less and action "Hero-less". Granted Dwayne Johnson was not being "The Rock" in this film, but he could have met us eager fans half way!  As the movie rolled on, he never wore anything less then a long sleeve shirt that down played his brawn. Ok "I get it!" This is not SUPPOSED to be the The Rock that we all know.  However, standing at 6 foot 4 and weighing in at about 265 pounds, it's hard to hide that size, no matter what angle the film's cameras are shooting him from; this subconsciously sets up the audience for something that they are not going to receive, which is an action movie. The movie's trailer sets the film up for action; fancy editing, I guess, but ironically that is the same thing that killed the best parts of the movie. There were too many scenes that left you saying, "Wait, what does that mean?" or "What happened to her?" The film is two hours in length, which is too long to sit through without having plot, scene, and character pay offs. I really wanted this movie to be Johnson's "John Q". Instead I got….I don't know what I got really, but it wasn't what I wanted for my Sunday night movie! Snitch would have been my first pick for a movie to go and see on a weekday, or even a for sure DVD pick-up. All in all Dwayne Johnson is a forced to be reckoned with and ill be looking forward to his 2013 onslaught of summer films.