This movie came out a month ago, and so nobody probably cares about it at this point, and I can’t really blame them, but don’t despair, there are plenty of new articles coming today.
What Works: This action-“drama” starring none other than The Rock (in his “serious actor” mode, which feels even more patently fake than his cheese-ball family movie persona) actually jumps off from a serious issue worth exploring. It deals with the mandatory-minimum drug law’s policy of sending a first-time drug offender to a predetermined sentence that doesn’t take the circumstances of their case into account at all. The Rock’s teenage son gets sucked into this too-easy trap when he signs for a package that contains ecstasy, gets slapped with a ten year minimum sentence, and has to snitch on someone to get the minimum reduced. Since he doesn’t know anyone, his dad has to bait an inner-city cocaine dealer and (eventually) a drug cartel so he can snitch away his son’s sentence. This is also supposedly based on a true story…
What Doesn’t Work: But ends with a car chase that defies belief, not to mention frequently gets bogged down in melodrama that ranges from dull to laughable. It’s admirable for The Rock to want to stretch his “acting chops” but he’s painfully miscast here. Old pros like Barry Pepper (a cop), Benjamin Bratt (a cartel heavy), Michael K. Williams (a St. Louis gang leader), and Susan Sarandon (an ambitious prosecutor) steal every scene right out from under him. Unfortunately, they only average about 10 minutes of screen-time and the film might have been better if they’d been given more to do. It’s not a good sign when we’re watching an everyman’s descent into hell, and all I can think is “this would be a lot better if it were an ensemble film.” If the central conflict doesn’t work, the whole movie doesn’t.
What I Would Have Done Differently: The mandatory-minimum laws are scary, corrupt, and dangerous (the documentary The House I Live In covers this in much better detail) so I’d welcome a great drama about them. Maybe they’ll make one someday.