Snitch Reviews
Top CriticThe film tries to paint in shades of gray with vague criticisms of the war on drugs, but the absurdity of its he-man Everyman plot ends up turning its moral palette a muddy brown.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
Despite its apparent compromises to noble finger-wagging (initially) and requisite fist-pumping (eventually), Waugh has fashioned a sturdy character-first entertainment out of Snitch.
Dwayne Johnson tries so hard to be taken seriously in the ponderous and preposterous drama Snitch that it hurts to watch him in much the same way it hurts to watch the weightlifting competition at the summer Olympics.
Ultimately, unfortunately, this is a property that probably would have been better as one of Johnson's old, less ambitious films - straightforwardly violent, and crammed with two-fisted revenge - than as this more polite, issue-oriented thriller.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
When the list of the year's most eminently forgettable films is drawn up at the end of 2013, "Snitch" will likely be near the top.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
"Snitch" is protein-and-starch filmmaking at its utilitarian -- and belly-filling -- best.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
The dialogue is preachy, the drama too earnest and the action kind of sluggish, though it's hard not to get a jolt when Johnson jumps behind the wheel.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Based on a true story, it has the weirdness of real life, which is good. But also like real life, it has that funny way of not making much sense or being all that enjoyable.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
In its focus on an ordinary family facing a nightmarish scenario, Snitch is a terrifying but relatable story.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Mr. Johnson's screen presence, however charismatic, is out of sync with the rest of the movie.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Whatever lizard-brain fun might have been had in watching Johnson do battle against a drug cartel is weakened by the occasional hard tug at the social conscience. The film winds up divided against itself.
In "Snitch," Dwayne Johnson delivers a strong, disciplined performance as an ordinary civilian trapped in a Kafkaesque corner of the legal system.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Someone please get director Ric Roman Waugh a tripod!
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Its nominal outrage over the severity of our nation's sentencing laws for first-time drug offenders is quickly subsumed by a jacked-up narrative of a father going to extremes to save his son.
Ultimately, the social-issue element of the movie gets buried in the wreckage, but it's comforting to know it's there.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Nobody is going to confuse a Dwayne Johnson movie with "Les Misérables." But "Snitch" gets a decent amount of drama (and action, of course) out of the argument that there's paying for a crime, and then there's overpaying.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
For all its lunkheadedness, "Snitch" is a shockingly deeper, less action-oriented affair than one would expect ...
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Williams, Bernthal and Pepper ride to the rescue of the marquee talent, and also to Snitch.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
The B-movie action version of an advocacy doc: It tries (with some success) to show the inequity in a system in which a first offender on a drug charge can, in many cases, spend more time behind bars than a rapist, or armed robber, or even a murderer.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Half crime thriller, half family drama, with a bit of legal and behind-prison-walls suspense thrown in, "Snitch" is like watching an elephant on ice: inelegant, but you admire the effort.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
"Snitch" is more of a dramatic thriller than an action movie, and director Ric Roman Waugh fills it with close-ups, dark interiors and tense faces.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
"Snitch" has a way of keeping you guessing about the next turn in its story, and a way of keeping Johnson's character compellingly at the mercy of others.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
This movie executes two missions: A) to entertain us; and B) to put some big exclamation points on a couple of messages about certain drug laws in this country in need of a thorough re-examination.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Designed to make empathetic citizens question the system, this strangely compelling issue pic plays less to auds' hearts than to their craving for testosterone ...
Unusual for this sort of thing, Snitch is a film for which you remember the characters and actors more than the big action moments.
