Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Susan Sarandon, Barry Pepper, Benjamin Bratt
At: DT cinemas & others
Rated: 4.5/10
At the ticket counter, you are warned. “This is a dark movie,” the girl tells you. DarkIJ As in the genre, you ask. “No, the picture is very dark. It has been shot in darkness,” she explains.
Indeed, 70 per cent of the film is in silhouette, shot against the light or with no light at all. That helps in a way, because you spend some time trying to figure out your way through this one. Otherwise, Snitch, despite the presence of Dwayne Johnson and Susan Sarandon, is just a run of the mill mount made in a hurry.
To begin with Sarandon is short-shifted and her role is at best skeletal. Dwayne does his best to revive proceedings while groping in the dark and in trying to save his son from a drug sentence of 10 or more years.
There drug dealers, there are federal investigators and there is a father trying to get on to the other side to somehow save his son who is clean but in for a “dumb” mistake.
The film fails to make much impact, or involve you in this attempted emotional story and the way Dwayne and his brawn is treated, you really feel let down. There is no muscular fight, there is no gun toting. In fact, he is bleeding blue on the screen, trying to find his feet in getting the big drug cartel into the net of the law-makers.