JASON MOMOA became a big action star after the success of “Aquaman” and he now stars in a movie on Netflix, “Sweet Girl”, a title which, of course, does not refer to him.
He plays Ray Cooper, a former military man whose wife Amanda (Adria Arjona) is dying of cancer.
He learns that a new drug just approved by the FDA can save his wife, but it was taken out of the market before treatment can even begin.
The head of the BioPrime company, Simon Keeley (Justin Bartha), wants to delay its release for more profit for their company.
In a TV interview, Ray talks to Keely and threatens to kill him if the drug won’t be released. But we all know you can’t fight greedy big business, so his wife died.
Ray and his daughter, Rachel (Isabela Merced), are crushed.
A newspaperman later informs Ray that his personal investigation got him evidence against the evil practices of BioPrime and a corrupt politician.
He arranges for him and Ray to meet in a subway train, but it turns out that a hired killer is waiting for the journalist there and stabs him to dead. Ray is also stabbed but he survives while his daughter Rachel is knocked out. Ray then becomes the nemesis of BioPrime, vowing to get justice and avenge the death of his wife.
What follows is a series of encounters with the bad guys who are all protecting the duplicitous BioPrime executive. An FBI Agent, Sarah Meeker ( Lex Davis), is assigned to the case and wants to arrest Ray.
Actually, the film starts with a flash forward scene where Ray is shown trying to escape from the FBI agent and runs on top of a baseball stadium. This is a key scene because after this opening scene, the film formally starts at the beginning of the story and shows us what has happened so far in a series of flashbacks.
Then, when it gets to the part where Ray is running on top of the stadium, he is shown jumping into the river below and voila! Something amazing happens! He is transformed! No, not into an Aquaman with superpowers, but into something else.
Of course, we cannot reveal it and spoil it for you. You have to see it for yourself. This is the big confounding twist in the movie and sorry, it didn’t work for us at all.
We don’t know if you’d buy it, but the surprise in the convoluted plotting puts everything that has happened before this scene into a different light, including all the violent and brutal scenes.
The script is written by two writers no less, and is the directorial debut of Brian Mendoza.
The problem is that they do not succeed in selling their movie’s main premise where they sort of cheat the viewers to come up with a mind-boggling twist that no one could see coming simply because… it’s so bobo!
Jason Momoa is not known for his acting but he is given some acting scenes here, like when his wife died and he is shown devastated, weeping uncontrollably in a hospital corridor. Maybe he wants to win an Oscar someday.
Isabela Merced as Rachel has her own moments. She’s the former child actress saved by Benicio del Toro in “Sicario 2” and also played “Dora The Explorer”.
The fight scenes are quite well choreographed with bodies crashing through glass windows and tumbling down the stairs.
But after the head-scratching twist in the story, you get to question the veracity of all the action set pieces since the identity of the hero who you think is a killing machine turns out to be questionable and it all becomes ridiculous.
Wonder what Jason Momoa saw in this project that he is even its executive producer.
