THERE'S A TIDY Hollywood cottage industry for films about nice, everyday dads who suddenly get far less nice and go on self-righteous violent rampages when their families are threatened. So if every other Hollywood leading man gets such a plum role, why not Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson?

In Snitch, The Rock tries unsuccessfully to downplay his inherent Rockishness (he is "The Rock," after all) to portray a nice, divorced dad whose son is coerced into making a drug deal and tossed into prison... waitasecond... FOR TWENTY YEARS?!? Yep, such is our government's continuing "war on drugs" which goes easy on first time offenders—IF they snitch on those higher up in the drug chain. But what if the youthful offender doesn't have anyone to snitch on? Well, then obviously, dad has to step in and infiltrate the drug cartels himself, and... CAN YOU SMELL WHAT THE ROCK IS SNITCHIN'?

With such a ridiculous premise, the least one can hope for is lots of unintentional hilarity—and happily there is some of that in Snitch: The Rock's attempt to play "normal" is constantly belied by the muscles straining against his fitted shirts, and his many attempts at squeezing tears from his eyes are foiled due to damage incurred from excessive eyebrow raising during his days with the WWE.

Unfortunately, there are way too many failed attempts at emoting, and way too few attempts at ass-kicking for Snitch to overcome it's sad sack, overly ambitious moral which is (ahem): Drugs are bad! Drug dealers are bad (and more often than not, black or Latino)! And yes... even our own government is bad for treating first time offenders so poorly, and isn't this movie brave to be the one to say so!

All that being said, I wish The Rock was my dad. At least he tries to cry.