Snitch
Summit Entertainment | Release Date: February 22, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
51
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 34 Critic Reviews
Positive:
13
Mixed:
17
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallFeb 20, 2013
Snitch is grittily streetwise, and until its last 20 minutes fairly credible compared to other movies "inspired by" true stories. Read full review
75
Film.comWilliam GossFeb 26, 2013
Despite its apparent compromises to noble finger-wagging (initially) and requisite fist-pumping (eventually), Waugh has fashioned a sturdy character-first entertainment out of Snitch at a time of year when those are all too rare to behold. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenFeb 21, 2013
Pleasant because, instead of the usual hero-and-mayhem jive, Snitch is an honest exercise in workmanlike craft. This is to film what ceramic is to floors or Billy is to bookcase or what a third-line centre is to a winning hockey team – hardly great but good and solid and functional. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia PuigFeb 21, 2013
In its focus on an ordinary family facing a nightmarish scenario, Snitch is a terrifying but relatable story. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsFeb 21, 2013
It's an entertaining picture — pulp, coming from a place of righteous indignation. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriFeb 22, 2013
There’s a lot of cartoonish potential in Snitch, but director Ric Roman Waugh (who previously made the excellent prison drama "Felon," another exercise in somber desperation) seems intent on trying to sell the movie as a more serious enterprise. And amazingly, the gambit works. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyFeb 19, 2013
Unusual for this sort of thing, Snitch is a film after which you remember the characters and actors more than the big action moments. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubNathan RabinFeb 20, 2013
Snitch toys with moral ambiguity and fatalism before losing its nerve and delivering the action-movie goods in a climax that hews closer to fantasy than the keenly observed realism of the film’s solid center. Read full review
63
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanFeb 21, 2013
Snitch is protein-and-starch filmmaking at its utilitarian -- and belly-filling -- best. Johnson brings the steak; Bernthal the sizzle. The father-son drama is served up as sauce on the side. But as long as the beef isn’t too overcooked, who needs the A1? Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTom RussoFeb 21, 2013
Snitch gets a decent amount of drama (and action, of course) out of the argument that there’s paying for a crime, and then there’s overpaying. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaFeb 21, 2013
Directed by veteran stuntman Ric Roman Waugh, Snitch is shot with a mix of nervous close-ups and weirdly vertiginous angles. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperFeb 20, 2013
Who would have guessed Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson would deliver the best work of his career playing a guy who squares off against a pack of small-time street thugs. Read full review
63
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreFeb 19, 2013
What gives it’s juice is the supporting cast. John Bernthal (“The Walking Dead”) is credibly wary as the ex-con John begs to get him in the door of the drug world. And the terrific Michael Kenneth Williams is the first dealer he meets, a guy who pulls a gun on him just to test him. Read full review
60
EmpireJames WhiteApr 1, 2013
While not the balls-out action movie the marketing suggests, this Rock-powered family drama is not with its moments. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfFeb 22, 2013
Snitch is a movie that cries out for the wiry B stars of yore: Robert Forster, a younger Tommy Lee Jones. And it would have occurred to a craftier screenwriter to make his hero’s walk on the criminal wild side a touch more tempting. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicBarbara VanDenburghFeb 21, 2013
Although Johnson performs admirably in the drama-heavy role — far better than many of his action-hero colleagues would manage — John Matthews is a character as boring as his name. Read full review
60
VarietyPeter DebrugeFeb 19, 2013
It's nice to have actors of Sarandon and Pepper's caliber onboard for the office-bound wheeler-dealer scenes, but mostly, it's the prospect of witnessing Johnson at the helm of an 18-wheeler as he rams his way through machine-gun fire that excites. Read full review
55
NPRScott TobiasFeb 22, 2013
Whatever lizard-brain fun might have been had in watching Johnson do battle against a drug cartel is weakened by the occasional hard tug at the social conscience. The film winds up divided against itself. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleFeb 21, 2013
Not the usual action movie. It's too odd for that. Based on a true story, it has the weirdness of real life, which is good. But also like real life, it has that funny way of not making much sense or being all that enjoyable. Read full review
50
New York PostLou LumenickFeb 21, 2013
A glorified TV movie. Read full review
50
The New York TimesStephen HoldenFeb 21, 2013
For all its violence and road rage, Snitch doesn’t disintegrate into noisy popcorn nonsense. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliFeb 21, 2013
Someone please get director Ric Roman Waugh a tripod! Snitch might be a passable action-thriller but it's hard to say because every time an action scene comes along, the image shakes so badly it's impossible to keep anything in view or focus. Read full review
50
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsFeb 21, 2013
The verdict on Snitch is that Johnson has attempted a career detour on a street marked Do Not Enter. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleLouis BlackFeb 20, 2013
Unfortunately, Snitch is torn between being an ideological drama and a more traditional action film – and Johnson’s presence only contributes to the confusion. Read full review
42
Entertainment WeeklyKeith StaskiewiczFeb 28, 2013
The film tries to paint in shades of gray with vague criticisms of the war on drugs, but the absurdity of its he-man Everyman plot ends up turning its moral palette a muddy brown. Read full review
40
The TelegraphRobbie CollinJun 21, 2013
Neither clever nor stupid enough to work. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawJun 21, 2013
Good intentions are all but submerged in nonsense. Read full review
40
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottFeb 22, 2013
This is the sort of movie that Charles Bronson would have made back in the day, and indeed a shot of Johnson standing in a sporting goods store, contemplating a wall of shotguns as he gets ready to get busy, could have come from any "Death Wish." Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyFeb 21, 2013
All the talking would be fine, but the dialogue is preachy, the drama too earnest and the action kind of sluggish, though it's hard not to get a jolt when Johnson jumps behind the wheel. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierFeb 21, 2013
Snitch is like watching an elephant on ice: inelegant, but you admire the effort. Read full review
30
TimeMary PolsFeb 25, 2013
Snitch wasn’t going to be good no matter what Johnson did; it is so poorly directed that even Academy Award winner Susan Sarandon, playing a shrewish federal prosecutor, comes off as a hack straight off a soap opera. Read full review
30
Village VoiceMelissa AndersonFeb 21, 2013
Though Snitch loudly announces itself as a social-issues movie, its nominal outrage over the severity of our nation's sentencing laws for first-time drug offenders is quickly subsumed by a jacked-up narrative of a father going to extremes to save his son. Read full review
25
The PlaylistDrew TaylorFeb 21, 2013
Snitch is just a big, dumb, ugly-looking waste of time, one that turns one of cinema's most charismatic heroes into a restless drone. As they say in the joint: snitches get stitches. But Snitch deserves to be put down for good. Read full review
25
Slant MagazineFeb 20, 2013
Snitch is the latest in a long line of films whose sole purpose is to flatten a major social problem into a pulp ideal for self-serious spectacle. Read full review
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