“This wasn’t supposed to be like this”, and so can we say about this movie. Netflix’s recent release Sweet Girl has been an unmitigated disaster. Brian Andrew Mendoza made his debut in Hollywood with this revenge action drama, starring Jason Momoa and Isabela Merced as the two central protagonists. Before getting farther, how about a bit of plot.
The story is quite simple. Ray, Amanda, and Rachel Cooper are a small, cheerful family of three living in Pittsburgh. Their lives come crumbling down when Amanda falls ill with an unusual form of cancer. The only medicine which could save Amanda was pulled off the market by the CEO of Bio Prime Simon Keeley, so that he could profit more from the drug. After a while, Amanda dies due to lack of treatment. This led Ray and Rachel to set off a new journey to vindicate the death of Amanda.
After 6 months of this scene, Ray receives a call from a journalist, Martin Bennett, who mentions he has evidence of criminal activity committed by Bio Prime. Their meeting was supposed to be in a subway station, what they didn’t realize that they were followed by Rachel and a hitman who has been appointed to stop Ray and Martin. In the conflict, Martin was killed and Ray was stabbed. Why am I mentioning this? Because this will be proved as a very important incident in the story.
Anyway, back to the movie. After 2 years of the subway incident, we see Ray and Rachel still tracking the company to find out evidence to back their case. Ray was on a path of revenge, killing anyone and everyone on his way. After several conflicts, we saw Ray almost get caught by the officials. But no wait! Do you think that’s the whole story? Hello no!
This is where we get our biggest climax. It was not at all Ray. Yes guys, all this time, all the fights. It was Rachel. Turns out after the subway incident, Rachel was suffering from PTSD and dissociative identity disorder, which led her to believe she was her father and she was avenging the death of her mother. And what happened to Ray, you ask. Remember the subway incident. Ray was actually stabbed to death. And all this time, Rachel was just hallucinating about her father. Anyway, at last, she caught the culprits and avenged her mother and moved on in a path of a new future.
We appreciated the beginning of the movie, how it was working with such a deep plot, but blahs out as it proceeded further. The movie had a lot of things going on, and it’s safe to say it showed none of the points perfectly. Some of the relevant points like the loss of a loved one, father- daughter bond, psychological disorder, broken U.S healthcare policy, dirty politics, the rough realism of the business world and so on. It just brushed off the topics and rushed throughout the movie. The only thing that comes to your mind after watching the movie is “Jack of all trades, Master of none.”
The game changing realization, the ultimate climax was itself shown just 20 minutes before the movie ended. And they tried to fit in all the vital missing puzzles within that 20 mins, which we think was a huge mistake. If we could have Rachel in action more, it would be more convincing that all the action sequences were performed by Rachel herself and not her father. Otherwise, it’s hard for us to visualize that it was actually Rachel all along. It’s almost like the writers depended on that one twist for the success of the movie, and they didn’t even do a good job depicting it.
Sweet Girl was a dull attempt to blend thriller with tragedy. With such talented actors on board, it almost seems like the director failed to achieve the full potential of the actors. Although it was nice to see a soft side of Jason Momoa and he pulled off his character strongly. And Isabela Merced was impressive as well. In short, sweet girl is not a type of film which will have a forever name in history, but it’s prudent to suggest it’s good for a one time watch. For more interesting content, check out our articles on “reminiscence” and “respect”.