“Snitch” boils down America’s War on Drugs™ to a family drama, focusing on one muscle-bound man’s determination to wrestle a deal from a hard-nosed US Attorney and free his son from jail.
The Rock… er… Dwayne Johnson is John Matthews, owner of a successful construction company and estranged father to Jason (Rafi Gavron). Jason falls into a Kafka-esque legal loophole when his drug-dealing best friend implicates him as a trafficker in return for a break on jail time. Under America’s strict War on Drugs™ laws Jason is facing a mandatory ten-year sentence unless he gives up the name of a co-conspirator but because he’s innocent he has no one to snitch on. Enter John who gets the action underway when he asks the US Attorney (Susan Sarandon), “What if I do it for him? What if I help you make arrests?” Cue the cage match between The Rock and assorted drug dealers (including “The Wire’s” Omar, Michael Kenneth Williams).
Snitch isn’t a bad movie, but it is a miscast one. As charismatic as Johnson is, his physicality gets in the way here. The character is a determined regular Joe; a father willing to go to any lengths to help his son, but how much more effective would this story have been if he didn’t resemble a cop who could crash the drug dealers he’s working with between his muscular thumb and forefinger?
Imagine the part played by an actor who doesn’t look like a superhero. As someone whose fatherly instincts kick in when his son is at risk and you’d have a believable core to the story. While John’s concern for his son seems genuine enough, with his shaved head, goatee and bulging muscles Johnson is a bit too much of a mountain of a man to pull off the meek act he tries with the drug dealers. Looking like The Rock works against him here.
“Snitch” is a hybrid of message film and thriller. The message is a bit muddled, but the idea seems to be that the War on Drugs™ needs to find a new plan of attack. Maybe if there’s a sequel Johnson could play a General in the War on Drugs™. Dress him up like a soldier and send him off to hunt down cartel kingpins. Now that’s a part I could see him playing.
The film career of Dwayne Johnson a.k.a. The Rock is a bit of a mystery. He is charismatic, well known, talented but what he isn’t is a movie star. From his humble beginnings as an action wannabe in “The Mummy Returns” and “The Rundown” to his stab at mainstream success in “Be Cool” and art house cred in “Southland Tales” to his most recent incarnation as a children’s entertainer he always seems to be on the cusp of a real, sustainable a-list movie career, but never seems to be able to get over the final fame hurdle. His movies haven’t been consistent quality wise or commercially—“Southland Tales” cost 17 million and only made 273K at the b.o.—and, I don’t think his latest, “Tooth Fairy”, is going to do much to improve that situation.
Johnson is Derek Thompson, a former big league hockey star now playing for the Lansing, Michigan Ice Wolves. He’s the team’s enforcer, a hip checking bad boy knick named The Tooth Fairy for his habit of leaving his opponents with a mouth full of bloody Chiclets. After telling his girlfriend’s daughter that the tooth fairy doesn’t really exist he receives a summons from the Department of Dissemination of Disbelief and is sentenced to two weeks as a real tooth fairy as punishment for crushing kid’s dreams. Adapting to the wings and newfound special powers he comes to realize the importance of dreams and aspirations.
Originally titled “Sweet Tooth,” the script for “Tooth Fairy” has been kicking around Hollywood since the early nineties and was long rumored to be a vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger. The premise was slightly different, but the jokes would have been about the same: squeeze a large man into a pink tutu and let the hilarity begin. Except that there isn’t much hilarity to be had.
Old pros Billy Crystal and Julie Andrews—who plays the Fairy Godmother as a cross between Mary Poppins and Judge Judy—work the material for all it is worth, but aside from the odd giggle and Fairy pun—Fairy Krishna’s anyone?—this is a one joke movie that gets most of its mileage out of the image of a tough guy wrestler wearing gossamer wings.
It is, in many respects a sillier version of Dwayne Johnson’s biggest hit, “The Game Plan,” a movie about a sports star who learns to access his softer side, but “Tooth Fairy” is too soft. Johnson has become too kid friendly. He’s now just a big teddy bear, with a range of expression that wouldn’t be out of place in an English pantomime. I know kids enjoy bigger than life characters like Johnson. He’s kind of a real life super hero, but I’m not sure the acting career he imagined for himself when he was working with directors like F. Gary Gray and Richard Kelly would involve prancing about in a pink tutu for the delight of small kids.
It’s a living, but it’s not am a-list career. Somebody has to learn how to harness Johnson’s natural charisma and talent and finally put him in a good movie!
You can blame (or thank, depending on your point of view) Vincent K. McMahon for movies like Mr. Nanny and Abraxas. Both starred wrestlers — Hulk Hogan and Jesse Ventura respectively — and while WWE chief McMahon didn’t write or direct either of the films, he understood the promotional importance of allowing his wrestlers to make the leap from the ring to the big screen.
It wasn’t always that way however.
Although wrestlers have been appearing in movies for decades—wrestler Lenny Montana played The Godfather’s Luca Brazzi and Tor Johnson, the Super-Swedish Angel, made 31 movies including the legendary Plan 9 From Outer Space — initially the powerful McMahon family actively tried to keep their wrestlers off the screen.
For instance, the elder McMahon, Vincent J., who originally hired Hulk Hogan, refused him permission to appear in Rocky III.
He resolutely believed wrestlers should fight, not act. It wasn’t until Vince Jr. stepped in and gave Hogan the go-ahead that the heyday of wraslin’ movies began in earnest.
After that, many of McMahon’s bigger-than-life wrestlers tried their hands at Hollywood stardom, including Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a. The Rock, who headlines this weekend’s The Tooth Fairy.
Most of the movies in the wrestler genre aren’t great—filmjunk.com called Hulk’s Santa with Muscles a “crapterpiece”—but there are a couple of notable exceptions.
One of the more prolific wrestlers-turned-actors, Canadian-born Rowdy Roddy Piper has dozens of movie credits, but his high point came in 1988’s They Live, where he delivered the now classic line, “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.” It’s his “Hasta la vista, baby!,” and is one of the great action quotes of the decade.
And while it is unlikely that WWE Hall of Famer Stone Cold Steve Austin could ever receive any kind of acting award unless he did his trademarked Axe Handle Elbow Drop on the entire Academy, he has held his own in The Longest Yard and The Condemned, and has three films coming out in 2010.
Recently Triple H, Stacy Keibler and Goldberg have all tried for acting careers, and why not? McMahon calls his wrestlers “entertainers” and The Wrestler director Darren Aronofsky asked rhetorically, “Why aren’t wrestlers in SAG? If you really think about it, the Screen Actors Guild should organize them.”
