Snitch

Dwayne Johnson tries to flex his acting muscles in this smarter-than-usual action movie, based on a true story that gets under our skin. He's never played someone as fragile as this, which is fascinating even if the film ultimately can't resist cranking up the action while turning rather preachy.

Johnson plays John, a construction company owner whose bright 18-year-old son Jason (Gavron) is caught in a drugs sting by an undercover agent (Pepper). Jason is facing 10 years in prison, and offered a way out if he can finger another drug dealer. But he doesn't know any, since he was set up himself. So John makes a deal with a federal prosecutor (Sarandon) to find a big dealer himself. He convinces reluctant ex-con employee Daniel (Bernthal) to work with him, contacting a local dealer (Williams) before going after the kingpin (Bratt). But of course things get increasingly dangerous the deeper they go.

While Johnson's acting chops aren't terribly subtle, he's such a charismatic screen presence that we are fully engaged with him from the start. The tender scenes between him and Gavron add weight to the whole story, while the tetchy connection between him and Bernthal keeps the film on a knife edge. By contrast, Sarandon and Pepper are pretty much just scene-stealing sharks using innocent people to do their dirty work.

Writer-director Waugh keeps the focus on the characters, even in the action set-pieces. This gives the film a darkly honest tone that pulls out real suspense and even some welcome moments of light relief. So by the time the shoot-outs and car chases take over the movie, we are fully invested. And we also can't possibly miss the strongly relevant message: that the war on drugs is a complete sham, targeting the wrong people and imprisoning those whose only real crime is naivete. It's not a subtle or comprehensive look at the issue (for that, watch The House I Live In), but it makes the movie a lot more than just another stupid smash-em-up.

Rich Cline