Snitch

The Rock is cooking up something new with Snitch, in which the part-time pro wrestler tries to expand his acting range with moderate success.

Dwayne Johnson has mostly been showcased on the big screen in action-hero roles and family comedies, but his latest thriller has Johnson playing more of a family man in a well-intentioned but woefully contrived story of injustice and reconciliation.

Johnson stars as John, the divorced owner of a trucking company who becomes embroiled in a legal mess when his estranged teenage son, Jason (Rafi Gavron), is arrested for accepting a shipment of drugs as a favor to a wayward friend.

Harsh laws dictate that Jason receives a minimum prison sentence of 10 years, so John — feeling guilt about his own abandonment of Jason years earlier — tries to appeal to the local district attorney (Susan Sarandon), who has a political agenda, for lenience.

She and her top agent (Barry Pepper) suggests a plea deal that would reduce Jason’s sentence, which leads to a desperate John undertaking a dangerous mission to help chase down a kingpin in a ruthless Mexican cartel.

The film, which claims to be inspired by true events, is an obvious attempt to condemn recent laws requiring mandatory minimum sentences for first-time offenders in drug cases. The film argues that because the severity of the punishment rarely fits the nature of the crime, it encourages snitching among the guilty and innocent alike.

While Snitch makes some persuasive arguments in its script by Justin Haythe (Revolutionary Road) and director Ric Roman Waugh (Felon), they too often become watered down and less convincing as the film gradually strains credibility.

Part of the problem is that Waugh, who comes from a background in stunt work, can’t keep his fingers out of the cookie jar of macho action clichés, subjecting John’s vigilante quest for justice to an array of shootouts, big-rig freeway chases and formulaic confrontations with drug dealers.

Johnson rises above that fray with a performance that shows the depth and sensitivity to match his charisma. More than some of his past and present colleagues in the ring, Johnson demonstrates some thespian potential that’s as much brains as brawn.

Yet Snitch feels like two movies smashed together into one, with the second half making the first half seem irrelevant by comparison.

Rated PG-13, 112 minutes.