The Rock, lends his celebrity to the similarly themed "Rock and a Hard Place," which hews closer to reality TV than most of HBO's nonfiction efforts. The film centers on the Miami-Dade County Corrections & Rehabilitation Boot Camp Program, which seeks to break the "cycle of incarceration" by putting 38 young men, all facing prison sentences for serious crimes, through a 16-week boot camp conducted by military personnel. "This is where your way got you," the participants are told, during an opening in which Johnson makes a brief appearance, discussing his own youthful run-ins with the law. After that, "Rock and a Hard Place" pretty dutifully chronicles the program's techniques, among them using physical exhaustion to "break down resistance" to the rehabilitation regime. Not everyone makes it through the program, with sobering consequences facing those who'll wind up in prison if they drop out or are dismissed.

Source: CNN March 24, 2017 20:35 UTC