In SNITCH, Benjamin Bratt (CATWOMAN) plays El Topo, a notorious ex-military badass who leads a Mexican drug cartel. He’s elusive to the authorities, preferring to stay back in a car and watch his underlings from afar, but when the shit goes down he’s the first to pull out a huge gun that looks like it should be mounted to a jeep. He’s very dangerous, especially to the naive Americans who he convinces to drive his drugs across the border. What they don’t understand is they don’t need to be working on a playlist for the drive back.

The obvious question: is this supposed to be a loose remake of EL TOPO, or a sequel, or what? I gotta go with prequel. At the end of EL TOPO El Topo (originally played by Alejandro Jodorowsky) had achieved enlightenment, gone underground and become a Saint. It just doesn’t follow that he would then become a cartel leader. Instead, SNITCH shows how the El Topo we first met riding through the desert with his young son came from a troubled background. It gives him all the more darkness to be redeemed from, retroactively adding more depth to Jodorowsky’s film.

You know what though, I can picture a remake. Think DEATH RACE. Jason Statham, P.W.S. Anderson, modernization loosely based on the original. Maybe he’d throw in some cars, maybe not, but disgraced security expert Jack “The Mole” Topolino travels the desert in a spiral fighting the different masters to get to the spot where he can tunnel into the CIA’s secret maximum security underground prison. Growing his hair long to disguise himself as “The Saint” he infiltrates the Freaks gang so he can locate the other mole, the one man who can prove he didn’t kill his wife or aid Al Qaeda.

The star of SNITCH is actually Dwayne T.R. Johnson, but don’t expect an action movie. This is of the Rockdrama subgenre, which also includes GRIDIRON GANG. Like that one it’s a big-hearted movie about a tough, hard working man trying to help young people get out of trouble, it’s about redemption and responsibility and going straight and what not. Also it’s a message movie trying to hammer home the serious point that minimum sentencing drug laws are fucked up.

See, The Rock’s son is a normal kid who does something dumb: he doesn’t say no to his friend who wants to send him a package of drugs to hold onto for a little bit. The friend gets busted though and is a fuckin weasel so he sets him up to get busted as soon as he cuts open the package. Minimum sentence 10 years unless he sets up somebody himself (kinda like a vampire or zombie, each snitch creates more snitches) and number one he doesn’t really know any drug dealers and number two he doesn’t want to do to somebody else what his supposed best friend did to him.

Where this becomes a Rockdrama is in dad’s insistence on justice. The law is clear, he’s not gonna get him out by anything done in a court. So he goes to the federal prosecutor (Susan Sarandon, DEAD MAN WALKING, SPEED RACER) and bugs her until she agrees to a deal where if he can bust a drug dealer himself then she’ll lower the kid’s sentence. That would actually make a good premise for a straight up action movie, but they try to play it more real and deal with the suspense of an undercover situation – will the drug dealer believe him, will the cartel believe him, will he put his family in danger, will he get his friend in trouble, will the feds keep their word, etc.

I’m not including an Action Comprehensibility Rating for this because I don’t consider it an action movie. There are a couple truck and gun related action sequences but they’re not the point of the thing and are shot in the standard issue chaotic style of the day. That’s too bad too because director/co-writer Ric Roman Waugh is a veteran stuntman who worked on such real deal action movies as THEY LIVE, ROAD HOUSE, TOTAL RECALL, UNIVERSAL SOLDIER, RAPID FIRE and HARD TARGET.

In addition to Johnson, Sarandon and Bratt, the cast also includes Barry Pepper as a DEA agent with a long billygoat beard and Michael Kenneth Williams as the dealer below the El Topo level. But the MVP supporting player is Jon Bernthal (Shane from The Walking Dead) as The Rock’s ex-con employee who hooks him up with the cartel. It doesn’t really make any bones about how shitty it is for The Rock to push a guy into this situation when he knows he’s trying to straighten his life out and stay out of trouble. The Rock is as flawed a hero as he is a father, but he acknowledges some of these weaknesses and learns some lessons by the end. I like the tension between his new family and his old one. He’s had much more success since the divorce so there’s even a class difference that his son resents him for.

In the title, the snitch could be the dumbass friend that got the kid in trouble in the first place, or it could be The Rock, who becomes a snitch for the greater good. I’m actually not clear on the movie’s stance on snitching and/or whether snitches do in fact get stitches. But it’s very clear that the drug sentencing laws are a travesty, and I appreciate that point.

I can see why The Rock would want to take a role like this. It takes advantage of both his physical presence (useful to the cartel) and his aura of decency. He gets to be the successful man and the working man, he owns the trucking company but you’re not surprised when he can drive the trucks himself, or when he stops to help an employee he doesn’t know do some grunt work. It’s got this strong hook that he will do anything to help his son, and a little dimension in that the things he’s obviously seeking redemption for are small, human things and not your usual dark past shorthand like he killed someone or he failed to save the president or something. Other than the action scenes it’s a well made, watchable movie that he’s good in.

Unfortunately, like too many of his movies, it’s pretty much instantly forgettable. Another practice run for the great movie he seems destined to star in some day.