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I have never been a fan of The Rock. I understand his appeal, mind you, but he's never been a key force in my movie viewing life and I typically shy away from his films. I have yet to enjoy him in a comedic setting, I find the allure of professional wrestling to be baffling, and I have long taken the stand that I would not refer to The Rock as any other name until he proved that he could actually act. Well, the day has come, for while Snitch may not be anything to write home about, Mr. Dwayne The Rock Johnson gives what I would consider to be his finest (and perhaps first) example of real acting. Congratulations on your new title, Mr. Johnson. Please don't beat me up.

John Matthews (Johnson) is a hardworking construction company owner who has become estranged from his teenage son, Jason (Rafi Gavron). Jason gets caught up in a federal sting operation when he accepts a package of pills from a friend and since he has no knowledge to parlay, he finds himself facing 10 years in prison. Desperate to help his son, John convinces Daniel (Jon Bernthal), an ex-con who works in the construction yard, to put him in touch with a local drug dealer. Through this association, John is able to broker a deal with the district attorney to get his son's release upon the arrest of a major player in the drug game. But while he proves proficient at his job, John winds up getting closer than he ever expected to the cartel's leadership, a move that puts everyone in his family in great peril.

Snitch is the antithesis of the typical movie you would expect to find Johnson involved in. It has a slow pace, there is very little explosive action until the final sequence, and while the writing isn't particularly special (more on this in a minute), the story is definitely the driving force behind the film as opposed to any other element you typically get in a Johnson movie. Somehow, however, Johnson finds a groove within the world of Snitch that I really don't think he's hit in the past. He isn't trying to be humorous at all (always a plus in my opinion) but much more importantly, he's actually playing a character. Johnson's filmography is filled with examples of characters who are just The Rock in a different costume. The Rock as a cop, The Rock as a bodybuilder, The Rock as a hockey player turned fairy tale entity (*cringe*). In Snitch, however, I actually felt like I was seeing a real person on screen rather than another roided-out persona. John Matthews is a dad, a blue-collar worker, and most of all, a man, and I don't believe I've ever seen that from Johnson before. Moreover, he's a man who is severely out of his depth in a world he doesn't understand or fit in and that comes through quite clearly. In short, there's very little of The Rock being The Rock and beating the snot out of bad guys because he's The Rock. And I quite like that change.

Now, much of the rest of Snitch is mediocre at best. As hard as the film works to push its story as the main course rather than a paltry side dish, it is weak and sometimes horribly heavy-handed. Most of the supporting characters are painted with some extremely tired colors and the actors who play them do little to shed those clichéd and exhausted skins. Sarandon in particularly comes across as bored and uninspired; she can't have spent more than five days filming her part. The aforementioned slow pacing isn't necessarily a bad thing but it was unexpected and I found myself checking the time and wishing things would gear up. In addition, too many of the important events happen in quick bursts when a sustained build would have suited the film much better. John's family could have been developed rather than explained (a pet peeve of mine in a story-centric action film like this one is trying to be) and I could have used way more of Barry Pepper's undercover cop. Note to Hollywood: Barry Pepper makes everything better (except Battlefield: Earth). Give this man some screen time already.

As it stands, Snitch is something like a half-finished project with some strong moments brought to life by Johnson that are surrounded by some incomplete thoughts that could have and should have been refined. Even still, it's a fine performance by Johnson and that alone makes it worth a viewing, a sentence I never thought I'd have occasion to write.

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NOTE: I do not care about the historical accuracy of this film nor the supposed stance it takes on torture. It's a movie and its job is to tell A story, not necessarily THE story. Bear that in mind. Making a movie about the tracking and killing of Osama bin Laden could have been a rather easy endeavor. Just about anyone could have made that movie and turned it into a blockbuster sort of film that would have brought people to the theater even if the quality was low. Turning that movie into an award-winning, dramatic spectacle, though, was quite a tall order. When virtually the entire audience knows the ins and outs of your story right on up to its conclusion, it can be very difficult to create drama and intrigue that doesn't seem false. Katheryn Bigelow's ability to do just that takes Zero Dark Thirty over the top and propels it into the discussion for best of the year. Zero Dark Thirty begins two years after the bombing of the World Trade Center with the brutal torture of an al-Qaeda prisoner at the hands of CIA interrogation expert Dan (Jason Clarke) and a young special agent named Maya (Jessica Chastain). The information gathered through the interrogation leads Maya on an eight year quest with only one goal in mind: the location and apprehension, by whatever means necessary, of Osama bin Laden. This process proves more difficult than finding the proverbial needle in a haystack and costs Maya a great deal throughout her time on the case but the effort is finally justified on May 2, 2011 when SEAL Team 6 is sent in to take down America's number one adversary. Zero Dark Thirty opens with a black screen backed by a 911 call from the World Trade Center on 9/11, a choice that sets the tone for what is to follow in no uncertain terms. To call this movie "intense" would require a new definition for the word. It's more like "mega-intense" or "my- blood-pressure-will-never-recover-intense." Bigelow throws the audience into the torture sequence that made me squirm not for its gratuitous depiction but for its realism. The man being interrogated is BROKEN and that hits home fast and hard. From there, the pace slows at times but the tense urgency of that opening scene never wanes, leaving you on the edge of your seat even when there's virtually nothing happening. And if you do make the mistake of putting your guard down, Bigelow is quick to comeback with an action sequence that reminds you of this film's stakes. Perhaps the finest moment is in the final scene in which SEAL Team 6 invade bin Laden's compound. The sequence takes over 27 minutes to unfold and even though I knew exactly what was going to happen, Bigelow still drove the moment home with a quiet yet furious injection of natural adrenaline that kept my pulse up throughout. What really sets Zero Dark Thirty apart, however, is the performance of its lead. I don't know who discovered Jessica Chastain and gave her the big break she needed but that person should be given a large sum of money and some sort of medal. To think that Chastain could go from completely unknown to the woman who gave the year's best performance (which is what I would call this portrayal) in less than 18 months is a true Hollywood success story if ever there was one. Maya is an awesome and complex character to begin with (a credit to Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal) but Chastain takes that character and runs with it, creating a persona that serves as the driving force behind the entire movie. Chastain shows Maya to be a brash, single-minded personality and in the wrong hands the character could have EASILY become abrasive and obnoxious. Instead, Maya is truly dynamic and begs to be embraced by the audience. It goes much further than this, though; it isn't enough for Maya to be strong and likable. Bigelow puts the entire film on the shoulders of Maya and Chastain by making her the in-movie representation of the audience and moreover, the American people. Chastain is our window into the hunt for bin Laden and the emotions that she goes through are, I believe, symbolic of the ones the audience has gone through over the last decade. Zero Dark Thirty is built with remarkably strong beams in the form of terrific writing, an engrossing and familiar story, and outstanding supporting work from a strong cast of actors (most particularly Jason Clarke who should receive award attention for his role), not to mention a host of technical attributes that serve to heighten the experience. But Chastain is the load-bearing beam of the film and even a great performance might have left the film wanting. Well, it isn't great but instead a powerhouse portrayal that reverberates with far more emotion than I expected to find going in. The relief that Chastain exhibits in the closing moments washes over the audience in a way that can only be described as surreal and, for me, it is this final shot that solidifies Chastain's performance as the best of the year and Zero Dark Thirty as one of the more iconic films of the last decade.

Calvin Weir-Fields (Paul Dano) is your stereotypical brilliant-but- troubled writer. His first (and only) novel became an American sensation when he was only 19 years old and that success has haunted him ever since. Friendless and lonely, Calvin spends almost all of his time with his brother Harry (Chris Messina) or in the office of his shrink (Elliot Gould) who also happens to be his father. His chronic writer's block begins to clear, however, after a dream and he spends one glorious and productive night riding a story about a manic pixie dream girl named Ruby Sparks (Zoe Kazan). But just when his story begins to get good, he awakens to find Ruby in his kitchen, a manifestation of his mind that walks, talks, breaths, etc. like any other human. Calvin and Ruby embark upon what seems like a wonderful journey together, made complicated by the fact that Calvin can control Ruby's emotions, actions, and behaviors simply by typing them out.

For the most part, Ruby Sparks is a harmless, fun, and quirky tale that comes equipped with some quality performances. It's an interesting concept that certainly borrows at times from other films and stories but still manages to come across as fresh. It is often playful and it takes its subject matter lightly which in turn makes Ruby Sparks enjoyable if not particularly noteworthy. The conclusion ventures into significantly darker territory and to be honest with you I'm still not entirely sure if that works for it or not. It is a definite departure from just about everything else the film brands itself as throughout the first two and a half acts. At the same time, Calvin's melancholy nature does lend itself to the character having an edgier side and that certainly comes out as the film draws to a close. Part of me would have liked to have seen Ruby Sparks take a more dramatic, darker approach to its subject throughout its runtime rather that coming to that place in a rather abrupt manner but then this would have been a decidedly different film and much of its charm would have been lost.

The cast of Ruby Sparks does an excellent job of adding depth and value to characters that are fairly thin on paper. They are all made up of stereotypes and generic traits but Dano, Messina, and Kazan all bring some weight to their roles that make the film much more substantially than it would have been otherwise. Dano is superb, hitting the "troubled loner" nail right on the head. He personifies the right balance between successful and fear of further success, as well as a desperate need for attention, love, companionship, etc. Calvin is much the same as his character from Being Flynn in many ways but his performance here is much stronger. Messina, whose career is absolutely taking off between The Newsroom, The Mindy Project, and his small role in Argo, gives his character a slight air of seediness without becoming the overdone, "Just use this for sex!!!" guy that I kind of expected. For me the best scene in the movie is of Messina's reaction to realizing the implications of Ruby's existence. It's funny and perfectly measured. Kazan, who also wrote the film, is cute and charming and touches on each of the emotions Ruby goes through appropriately. I very much look forward to seeing what she has in store for us in the future, both on screen and behind the camera.

Overall, Ruby Sparks does what it sets out to do and brings together an interesting and quirky narrative nicely. It's nothing that I would consider particularly special or far-reaching in its aspirations but it is a nice little film that should go over well with most viewers.

Please check out my reviews at thesoapboxoffice.com