JON BERNTHAL AND DWAYNE JOHNSON IN SNITCH

The Rock don't crack, but that ain't enough

In Snitch, Dwayne Johnson AKA The Rock, a former wrestler and now an action star (or is he simply an action figure?) is directed by Ric Roman Waugh, a former stunt man turned writer-director, in a story that is perhaps designed to exercise The Rock's acting skills and sensitivity a bit more than usual. This time he plays a father so passionately loving he is willing to turn to crime, or playing a very dangerous role as police undercover decoy/informant, to save his young son from a long jail sentence. But Johnson still seems more like a sculpture (or maybe a rock, nicely chiseled) than an actor, and the movie is full of narrative and moral confusion.

In this story, nobody is a snitch, exactly. John Matthews (Johnson), who's grown prosperous with a Missouri trucking business, is divorced from the mother of his 18-year-old, Jason Collins (Rafi Gavron) and lives with a new wife and small child in a big McMansion. In the opening scene, Jason, later said to be about to go to college, takes delivery from UPS or FedEx of a package containing a large amount of Ecstasy with a sonar device underneath. He opens it up and bingo! A dozen DEA officers descend on him from all directions. He makes a run for it, but is immediately caught and thrown in jail. Due to the quantity of the drug, its illegality, and the draconian US drug laws, the minimum mandatory sentence Jason is very likely to get, as a first offender, is ten years.

Enter the forever young Susan Sarandon, playing a mean and publicity conscious federal prosecutor called Joanne Keeghan whom John Mathews seeks out to consult about his son. Somewhat grudgingly she reveals that Jason can save himself, or at least cut down his sentence from ten years to one year, if he can feed the feds information about others involved in the Ecstasy deal. Only his best friend, for whom he received the package, has already ratted on Jason. It's not clear if he knows much otherwise. Anyway he adamantly, even tearfully, refuses to dad to cooperate with authorities.

And then somehow it develops that John Mathews can make a deal with Ms. Keeghan and a DEA agent she works with called Cooper (Barry Pepper, with a long scraggly goatee) to find drug dealers, any drug dealers, if they're important enough, and that will spring his son. Do you believe this? I don't. Mathews has the occasional ex-con working in his trucking yard, and finds one called Daniel James (the interesting Jon Bernthal) who's recently done a "nickel" for a felony related to drugs. And somehow -- I didn't believe this either -- Mathews persuades James, who has wife and little kid of his own and has sworn to keep his slate clean from now on, to take his boss to the black local drug kingpin he used to work with, a hard man called Malik, pronounced "Maleek" (a salty Michael K. Williams).

These encounters between Mathews, James and Malik and his bro's are the best Snitch has to offer. When Malik is on screen the talk sounds authentic. Both Williams and Bernthal have an edge to them. Bernthal has a sly way with a hoodie, and Williams is scary. Their scenes together evoke the kind of movie Joe Carnahan might make, or something with Mark Wahlberg in it, and so do the ones with Malik's henchmen and the Spanish-speaking drug cartel peons (some of them scary and chiseled too) who appear soon after. But Dwayne Johnson just looks pure and sculptural and kind of sweet. He's built like a giant body builder, but he doesn't even really get in any fights.

I don't know if Waugh is making any points here about the brutality (and dubious success) of the War on Drugs. He keeps the action going at the cost of credibility, atmosphere and character development, except for those few happy moments of flavorful gangster dialogue. Sarandon's hard ass federal prosecutor has made a deal with Mathews, but it's unreliable. She and Agent Cooper are not always on the same wavelength, and all she really cares about is a high profile arrest to secure her reelection. Consequently Mathews and James get drawn deeper and deeper into a fake arrangement to deliver, first drugs, then a humongous amount of money destined for Mexico. Another salty drug lord character, much higher up than Mailk, becomes involved, called Juan Carlos 'El Topo' Pintera (a cool and confident Benjamin Bratt), and he has one or two good brief moments.

It's not clear how any of this could have been set up, and still less clear how Mathews could survive being used by the traficantes de drogas. But it's The Rock, who never fails, and so he doesn't, though his success comes at a considerable cost in lives and vehicular mutilation. The last reel is all highways and shootouts and property damage. Ric Roman Waugh seems to have had a significant career as a stunt man in the Eighties and Nineties, including titles like Hard Target, True Romance, The Crow, and Gone in Sixty Seconds. But it all ended in 2001 and he turned to directing. Snitch wants to tug at your heartstrings and challenge your moral sense but it disintegrates into not very original physical action featuring its generic-looking action figure hero. This movie was dumped in February, like the kind of macho stuff with Mark Wahlberg that can have an appealingly down-and-dirty noirish flavor. But mere date of release and subject matter are not a guarantee of edge or flavor. The Rock may tear up, but he does not crack, and it's not interesting to watch him. Still, his fans seem to like this, because it's reportedly not as dumb as what he's usually in. Oh.

Snitch, 112 mins., was released 22 Feb. 2013 in the US; the UK gets it 5 April; the French must wait till 8 May.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.