Sweet Girl is a surprisingly hard movie to really talk about because doing so would require digging into final act spoilers, which I am not planning on getting into with this review. It’s quite wild to see given the kind of film this is, a – for the most part – fairly straightforward action thriller in the vein of any number of 90s mid-budget, adult oriented projects, somewhere between The Fugitive and The Pelican Brief. In other words, the kind of movie we don’t get too often these days unless it’s coming from a filmmaker who specializes in this particular niche like Taylor Sheridan.
Sweet Girl is written by Gregg Hurwitz and Philip Eisner, and directed by Brian Andrew Mendoza, who is making his directorial debut after producing a number of projects with Jason Momoa, including his directorial debut, Road To Paloma. The film follows a father-daughter duo, Ray (Jason Momoa) and Rachel Cooper (Isabela Merced), who are in grief following the death of his wife, her mother, Amanda (Adria Arjona). She had cancer, and there was potential in saving her with some medicine that is about to be approved by the FDA. However, in a shady business move, BioPrime CEO Simon Keeley (Justin Bartha), pulls the medicine from the market, removing any chances for Amanda’s survival.
Devastated by the loss, Ray and Rachel struggle to move on, as he’s become very disconnected. He also holds a great amount of resentment towards Simon, and has revenge on his mind. However, a call from a journalist shows that there might be a way to expose Simon’s corruption, and bring justice to everyone he’s caused pain due to his business practices. Things soon take a turn when the journalist is murdered by a hitman named Santos (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), and the encounter leaves Ray injured as well. Time passes, and Ray becomes obsessed with putting the pieces together to figure out what Simon is really up to while also keeping himself and his daughter safe from Santos.
It all seems pretty straightforward, and, for the most part, it is. And that’s not a knock on the film, as a riff on these kind of middle-brow thrillers, it’s pretty solid. The action is fairly well staged, it’s brutal without being gratuitous, and the choreography does a good job at capturing a grounded messiness that makes it feel all the more real and visceral. While Momoa’s presence doesn’t necessarily evoke the everyman, he is clearly going for something more down-to-Earth, not like a polished move star, and he mostly makes it work. He also has a pretty engaging dynamic with Merced, who is terrific in the film. In everything I’ve seen her in, she always gives 110%, and she proves pretty capable as an action star as well.
Like I said, I won’t give away what happens in the final act of the film, but let’s just say it might make or break the experience for folks. As far as I’m concerned, I was willing to go with it. Not only was an interesting turn of events, but it adds a unique layer to an otherwise fairly standard genre exercise. I don’t know if it totally works, or if it is really earned, but it does something that very few movies do, and that is genuinely shock me and catch me off guard. And if it helps, it did make me curious about seeing the film again, just to see if I missed any other details that would have informed the reveal more.
Forgive me if it seems like I’m beating around the bush, if you see the film, you’ll know exactly what I mean. I don’t know if I would necessarily recommend Sweet Girl but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a good time. I find a lot of comfort in the sort of 90s thrillers that Mendoza is trying to evoke here, and I even find enjoyment in some of the mediocre ones. This is definitely a lesser throwback, but I had fun with it. And the final act pushes the film from being modest throwback into something a lot more interesting and stranger and overall a lot more memorable. I admire what the film is doing, and while I won’t say it’s a success, it’s an experience I certainly won’t forget anytime soon.
Sweet Girl is now available on Netflix.