It’s Jason Momoa versus Big Pharma in Netflix’s dopey Sweet Girl
Aquaman is a sensitive savage in this throwback to the twisty action junk of the '90s
Film Reviews Sweet Girl
In the Netflix action-thriller Sweet Girl (a.k.a. this week’s daddy-daughter movie), star/producer Jason Momoa is a bulky mass of working-class vengeance. He plays Ray Cooper, a long-haired, Pittsburgh family man who spends most of the movie either beating down or taking out dangerous people who want him eradicated before he gets too close to The Truth. Little do they know that their target practically lives at the gym and has been hitting the punching bag and sparring in the ring long enough to possess the kind of hand-to-hand combat training usually reserved for Navy SEALs.
According to the movie, this is what happens when someone loses a loved one to cancer. Cooper goes on the warpath after a major pharmaceutical company pulls a drug off the market that could’ve saved his dying wife (Adria Arjona). (The company is run by Justin Bartha, who we know is playing a tool because we first see him on a news show rocking an eco vest.) Cooper nearly joins forces with Vice to take down said company via exposé, but the team-up is short-lived, brought to an end by a violent attack that leaves him stabbed and the reporter dead. Cooper eventually goes on the run, his disapproving-but-loyal daughter (one-time live-action Dora Isabela Merced) in tow.
At this point, it should be mentioned that Sweet Girl has a Big-Ass Twist. If you’ve been watching movies for the past 25 years, you’ll see it coming even before the first half is over. Once you do catch wind of it, there’s a certain sick kick to be had from the ridiculous hoops first-time feature director Brian Mendoza and his screenwriters, Gregg Hurwitz and Philip Eisner, jump through to provide hints while still keeping the audience in the dark.
The Big-Ass Twist may take you back to 1999, when the two movies Sweet Girl rips off the most came out. To be honest, the whole movie is a big, clunky throwback to ’90s cinema. The adult-and-child-on-the-lam thing was something that got played to death back in Clinton-era multiplexes. (Anybody remember Bruce Willis protecting an autistic kid in Mercury Rising?) The movie even has its own version of the iconic De Niro-Pacino sitdown in Heat, where Cooper has a rather respectful meeting at a diner with the dedicated hitman, played by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, hot on his tail.
As hellaciously predictable and preposterous as Sweet Girl is, it could win over viewers nursing their own grudge against Big Pharma. Mainly, though, this is a vehicle for its star, that brawny softie Momoa. The brute-with-a-dad-bod doesn’t just prove that he can whup ass in this century (and without the aid of CGI). He also plays his blue-collar hero as a sensitive savage, warm and loving with his loved ones when he’s not tearing apart those endangering them. Dude has a lengthy crying scene and everything! In that way, Sweet Girl is a different kind of ’90s throwback: It turns The Artist Formerly Known as Aquaman into the living embodiment of Robert Bly’s mythopoetic men’s movement—an Iron John (or Iron Jason, as it were) for the 21st century.
22 Comments
Must be one helluva Big-Ass Twist to get me to want to go back to 1999!
Cooper goes on the warpath after a major pharmaceutical company pulls a drug off the market that could’ve saved his dying wife (Adria Arjona).Holy shit, that’s such an amazing, 70s B-movie premise. I am all in on this!!!
Nah, the 70s B-version would be that they introduced a drug, for say, cancer treatment, but which was really a CIA experiment in mind control.
If he could get a woman that looks like Adria Arjona in the first place he didn’t have to go on a murder spree. 40 days of mourning, maybe a sabbatical then get back on the horse and swipe right. I mean if you’re Jason Momoa, women come to you for crying out loud!
Will he ever be cast in a film where he has to cut his hair?
So, it’s the first season finale of Leverage?
To be fair, there are plenty episodes of Leverage that could be expanded into full movies. I’m kinda surprised they haven’t franchised the hell out of the Ocean’s 11 series by doing just that.
So his daughter is really just another side to his own personality, and also he was dead the whole time? Or does it all turn out to be happening in the head of John Malkovich? Or the doings of a filthy woods witch?
I’m assuming she’s dead the whole time. Otherwise, he’s among the worst fathers ever to be put to film, and I doubt that’s the big twist.
edit: I’m wrong
SPOILER…………Your first sentence is closest to the twist (Jason Momoa died early in the film and it turns out his daughter has been imagining him the whole time and she is the one on the revenge quest).
Ah, thanks. When I read the bit about him “surviving” an attack where he is stabbed, that kind of pointed the way. I’m terrible at guessing twists and mostly don’t even try, but I remember seeing The Sixth Sense and simply assuming the whole time that we were supposed to know he was a dead ghost. When I realized it was supposed to be a big surprise, that, for me, was the twist.
“The brute-with-a-dad-bod doesn’t just prove that he can whup ass in this century…”Wait a min…..Momoa has a dad bod.Fuck! I’m in trouble then…
Cooper goes on the warpath Don’t you mean…..a rampage?
Man, Steven Seagal’s dropped some weight.
If only Steven Seagal is this lovable off the screen.
don’t rope this in with the 1990s , this is a 2021 s#!t fit. the 1990s has there excuses. who’s going to explain to me why I waste my time on these movies, no wonder be people have to illegally download! costs too much to sift through all this BS.
This is my review, based on having to be forced to watch it this weekend by a girlfriend with a Momoa “thing”. It’s fucking terrible. This film is basically a Qanon fantasy. Some blue collar dude goes on a killing spree because a company pulled a cancer drug off the market and it was the female Democratic Senator and big pharma or some other nefarious “elites” who somehow conspired to pull the drug for profits. Okay… SPOILER ALERT!!!!!Turns out that our blue collar murdering badass isn’t actually Momoa, but instead a 5’1″ young woman who weighs ~100lbs. She’s got the skillset of Jason Borne and takes out dudes who are like 8 feet tall ANNNND jumps off the top of the PNC stadium, straight out about 30-40ft (you know, to avoid the ground that surrounds the stadium) and into the water. The badass girl survives car crashes, hitmen, a stab to the abdomen and a ~150ft drop into a cold river. You have to suspend all reason and understanding of physics and time to even maybe enjoy this. I found it extremely boring, nonsensical, geared toward conservatives/Q cultists and just generally unfun. There was supposed to be some core emotional element and that falls flat in the face of the absurdity of the narrative. According to my girlfriend who has terrible taste in media (in general) and a boner for Momoa, “That movie fucking sucked. Who decided it was smart to replace him with a 19 year old girl midway through the movie?!” So… two thumbs down?
Do you even like your girlfriend bruh?
I think the first link is incorrect, and should be https://time.com/6091102/sweet-girl-father-daughter-movies/
This movei tries way too hard to be realistic, it really needs a “he was special forces” speech to really ground it in escapist, dumb, ridiculous fun.