![]() A cheaper alternative is about to hit the market, and Ray is determined to get some as soon as possible – until BioPrime pays the manufacturer to hold the drug indefinitely. Her best chance is an expensive treatment manufactured by BioPrime, but the Coopers can’t afford it. We’ve seen the adult-and-kid-on-the-lam scenario so many times before, and there’s even the obligatory calm-before-the-storm sitdown with the main baddie sent to kill them (this one’s in an empty diner, which makes us wonder why the villain doesn’t just do the job there and then - although that’s perhaps the least of the problems with the scene).īut hold on: there is then a massive twist - because of course there has to be one - that not only gets telegraphed pretty early on (most of you will see it coming for miles) but makes all the events leading up to its revelation even more ludicrous in retrospect.Family means everything to Ray Cooper (Jason Momoa), so when his wife (Adria Arjona) is diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer, he all but moves into the hospital to ensure she receives top quality care. That turns the film into just a string of violent confrontations as Ray and Rachel go on the run, with both the pharma goons and the FBI in pursuit. The Cooper family’s motivations are never held up for examination, and while we all know for sure how evil and greedy Big Pharma can be, Sweet Girl offers not a shred of nuance or shading. But Sweet Girl doesn’t bother with even attempting the complexity that the Washington film strove (unsuccessfully as well) to attain. There are films, like the 2002 Denzel Washington vehicle John Q., where an average citizen is pushed beyond the limits of his endurance and patience by a maddening bureaucracy (also health care, in that case). What makes this even worse is that the script essentially makes Ray into a vigilante and then a murderer. But we have no idea how this happens: in fact, aside from a few scenes establishing that they both like to fight at a local gym (aha!), Ray and Rachel are completely defined by the loss of Amanda and the path it sets them on. Sweet Girl is one of those movies where the protagonist is supposed to be a working class, unassuming kind of individual who somehow turns into a one-person army and acquires the skills to take on hired killers, corporate security goons, and wealthy, resource-rich tycoons. Their pursuit of the truth puts father and daughter directly in harm’s way, escalating the family’s quest for justice into a mission of vengeance. Six months after her death, a still furious, grief-stricken Ray and his daughter Rachel (Isabela Merced from Dora and the Lost City of Gold) are tipped off by a reporter that the pharmaceutical firm’s machinations may be just the tip of a far larger conspiracy. Although a new generic medication is supposed to be available to treat her, a pharmaceutical company led by the slimy Simon Keeley (Justin Bartha) has it pulled from the market in order to boost the price - just before Amanda dies. ![]() The film then rewinds to “years earlier,” in which we see Ray enjoying life with his family, but their bliss is cut short when his wife Amanda (Adria Arjona) is stricken with cancer. Clearly in a heap of trouble, pursued by police and FBI agents (one of whom, played by Lex Scott Davis, climbs up to the roof herself and implores him to stand down), Ray mutters, “It wasn’t meant to be like this” before taking a running jump into the Allegheny River hundreds of feet below. Momoa plays Ray Cooper, who we first meet atop Pittsburgh’s PNC Park in one of those now-clichéd fast-forward sequences. A perfunctory layer of social consciousness is applied over the top, but it’s done in such a heavy-handed manner that the film just becomes exhausting to watch. This week it’s Sweet Girl, which stars Jason Momoa as a devoted husband and father whose loss of his wife to cancer - which could have been possibly prevented had the big, bad pharma company done the right thing - sends him and his daughter down a dark path of justice.ĭirected by Brian Andrew Mendoza, Momoa’s longtime producing partner who makes his directorial debut here, Sweet Girl fits the exact brief of the kind of run-of-the-mill thriller, written and shot according to a specific formula and anchored by one big star, which the streaming giant has made into a vast cottage industry. It’s Friday, which means that it’s time for Netflix to release another generic action thriller into the wild. ![]()
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