<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"FacebookPinterest\n\n To say that Dwayne &amp;quot;The Rock&amp;quot; Johnson will never be much of an actor is like saying that Alcatraz will never be much of a theme park. But that doesn&amp;#39;t mean he&amp;#39;s wrong to keep chasing those movie-star dreams. When it comes to being a natural camera subject, he&amp;#39;s got an unsuspected edge on the one and only Ah-nold. Say what you will about the WWE, ex-wrestlers know how to move\u2014whereas former bodybuilders, on the other hand, have spent their youths standing still and striking poses. Think about how many of Schwarzenegger&amp;#39;s signature moments consist of him striking a weaponry-abetted pose and delivering a zinger.\n\n Still, Ah-nold remains the gold standard when it comes to this kind of crossover. Johnson&amp;#39;s big disadvantage may be that he&amp;#39;s nowhere near as smart\u2014or unsentimentally entrepreneurial, let&amp;#39;s say\u2014about exploiting what we most enjoy him for. Both his preposterous build and his roguish grin are made for action comedy, but he keeps imagining a new world where he&amp;#39;s known as The Hankie. All the same, his earnest streak and even his inexpressiveness are part of the surprising appeal\u2014to me, anyway\u2014of Snitch, a movie I&amp;#39;m willing to bet won&amp;#39;t get enough credit for its unfashionable virtues. It&amp;#39;s not great, but its B-movie sturdiness is a relief from the kind of overwrought action spectacle that just hops from one showstopper sequence to another.\n\n Johnson plays John Matthews, a rugged but decent-minded Missouri construction-company owner whose sense of life&amp;#39;s basic fairness goes in the toilet once his teenage son from his first marriage, Jason (Rafi Gavron), ends up facing 10 years in the pen after stupidly agreeing to act as the go-between in a drug deal. (It&amp;#39;s the kind of part Charles Bronson could have pulled off in his sleep, though we lack useful counter-examples of Bronson doing it while awake.) Since reducing Jason&amp;#39;s sentence depends on giving up bigger fish\u2014and Jason doesn&amp;#39;t know any\u2014Dad makes a deal with the Feds to reel in a few himself, using his company&amp;#39;s big rigs as bait for a drug cartel in need of legit-looking wheels to haul its goods across the border.\n\n All he needs is someone to play matchmaker, so it&amp;#39;s lucky he&amp;#39;s got an ex-con named Daniel James on the payroll (Jon Bernthal, late of The Walking Dead). Unaware of his boss&amp;#39;s real purpose, Daniel doesn&amp;#39;t want to be lured back into the game, but he&amp;#39;s got a wife and young son to take care of and the twenty grand Matthews is offering is their ticket to a better, less risky life.\n\n The set-up takes its time pulling all this into place, which is why it&amp;#39;s too bad that the scenes meant to sell us on Matthews the devoted family man are the movie&amp;#39;s weakest. You could live without him hosting a barbecue as shorthand for the good life, and so on. In his scenes with both Jason&amp;#39;s distraught mom, Sylvie (Melina Kanakaredes), and our hero&amp;#39;s current wife, Analisa (Nadine Velazquez), Johnson can&amp;#39;t shake the effect of an Easter Island head trying and failing to mimic an emoticon, and the script\u2014co-written by the director, Felon alum Ric Roman Waugh, with Justin Haythe\u2014doesn&amp;#39;t give him much help. Not only are both women so thinly characterized that we can barely tell them apart, but the moviemakers are so intent on keeping Matthews a terrific guy that we never even find out why his first marriage went bust.\n\n However, Snitch improves considerably once Matthews launches his scheme. For one thing, Waugh is astute enough to surround his thespianically challenged leading man with players who can keep scenes lively even in one-note parts\u2014not only Bernthal, but Susan Sarandon (!) as the U.S. Attorney who signs off on the plan and Barry Pepper as a scruffy DEA agent who&amp;#39;s both ruthless enough to keep Matthews exposed and concerned enough to warn him about the dangerous game he&amp;#39;s playing. Maybe best of all is Michael K. Williams\u2014The Wire&amp;#39;s Omar Little\u2014as the local drug kingpin Daniel first hooks Matthews up with. If something in this ace actor is vomiting a little at playing one more inner-city crook, that may just add an impressively curdled streak to his performance.\n\n Once Matthews is making his first and then second run on the cartel&amp;#39;s behalf\u2014to test his loyalty, they insist on him driving the truck himself\u2014the movie turns into a sort of low-rent Breaking Bad, minus the perversity. (As the cartel&amp;#39;s overlord, who goes by the nickname &amp;quot;El Topo,&amp;quot; Benjamin Bratt adds an unmistakable Gus Fring vibe to the mix.) But Waugh, who spent decades as a stunt man before turning director, is shrewd about ratcheting up the action stakes gradually. The buildup is so low-key that the first, confused shootout is a genuine surprise, not the &amp;quot;Well, finally!&amp;quot; moment of gratification familiar to violence junkies.\n\n While things do get more high-octane from there on\u2014including, yep, a pretty cool truck crash near the end\u2014they&amp;#39;re kept in relatively human, non-cartoonish scale. Johnson&amp;#39;s performance also gets better, but not for the reason you&amp;#39;d expect. He may be in his element in action scenes, but his character isn&amp;#39;t; the closest to genuine acting Johnson comes is to keep reminding us that Matthews is an amateur at this crap. He doesn&amp;#39;t come into his bemuscled own and start spouting one-liners as he foils his enemies. Uh-uh\u2014he just wants to survive this mess in one piece.\n\n Even though Snitch definitely has a crummy side\u2014never more so than when Johnson has to deliver a by-the-numbers speech to Jason about how much he&amp;#39;s learned from the kid&amp;#39;s courage\u2014it&amp;#39;s a lot better than the movie I was expecting to see when I slumped into my seat. It&amp;#39;s February, remember? That&amp;#39;s when I&amp;#39;m grateful for small favors at the multiplex. &amp;quot;Dwayne Johnson&amp;#39;s best movie ever!&amp;quot; may not sound like much of a blurb, but it is something."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/notes-from-the-culture-bunker-the-rocks-new-movie-kinda-rocks>