Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Sweet Girl’ on Netflix, a Real Clunker of a Jason Momoa Action Vehicle

Jason Momoa IS Aquaman, however Jason Momoa IS NOT the Sweet Woman, his newest Netflix automobile. This contemporary-day non-franchise non-superhero (and non-Conan!) motion flick might be Momoa’s highest-profile original-concept film but, he stated, not daring so as to add one other hyphenate to this sentence. The title character is definitely performed by Isabela Merced, who we keep in mind because the younger charmer who performed the dwell motion Dora the Explorer in Dora and the Misplaced Metropolis of Gold. She performs Momoa’s daughter, who may be a chip off the outdated butt-kicking block.

‘SWEET GIRL’: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Ray Cooper (Momoa) stands on the roof of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ stadium. A helicopter spotlights him. FBI brokers chase him. One agent tries to coax him down. He stands on the sting and leaps into the water. Subtitle: YEARS EARLIER. In voiceover, Ray goes on about how the previous is sort of a dream and our children are like completely items of us, man. We see Ray and his spouse and child tenting alongside a dashing river. Good household. In the future, he will get a telephone name. Amanda’s (Adria Arjona) most cancers is again. Their daughter Rachel (Merced) is an adolescent. They crowd into Amanda’s hospital room. She’s misplaced her hair and Rachel attracts eyebrows on her with make-up and Amanda provides her a stuffed bunny.

The doc powwows with Ray and says a brand new drug is about to hit the market that’ll assist Amanda considerably. Lower to a while later — how a lot later I don’t know, is it essential, in all probability not, however all the various different title playing cards within the film appear to assume the passage of time is essential — and the doc says the pharmaceutical corp is pulling the drug from the marketplace for imprecise financial and/or political causes. Ray fumes. He’s a mixed-martial-arts fighter and he’s instructing Rachel find out how to work the heavy bag — however the heavy bag is working them now, so to talk. Amanda is barely acutely aware as Ray and Rachel watch the pharma CEO (Justin Bartha) discuss circles on the news. Ray calls in. With out the drug, he tells Mr. CEO, my spouse will die. Platitudes. Justification. Logic that isn’t logic. Ray threatens to kill him if she dies. On dwell TV. Not an excessive amount of later: We see Ray not getting a go to from the cops. As a substitute, he’s within the hospital hallway, wailing, uncooked with grief. The inevitable has occurred.

SIX MONTHS LATER. Ray. Heavy bag. Additional exhausting. Payments, PAST DUE. Ray and Rachel are surviving, barely. He will get a name from a journalist who’s engaged on a narrative about pharma CEO man and bribe this and offshore-account that. It goes deep. Too deep. He desires to satisfy with Ray, so off he goes, not realizing Rachel is tailing him. He meets the author on a subway automobile and earlier than they will even begin a dialog, some creep is stabbing them — to demise, he little question hopes. A combat ensues, the form of film combat the place a traditional human with a traditional cranium will get his regular cranium slammed into a traditional metallic pole and stays abnormally not unconscious. Rachel will get tossed round and the unhealthy man stabs Ray within the torso and throws him via a window and the whole lot goes black.

24 MONTHS LATER. Rachel. Heavy bag. She’s within the ring with a sparring associate and he or she will get him, actually will get him, and he tries to faucet out however she doesn’t let up on the choke till she snaps out of it, fortunately earlier than snapping his windpipe. She and Ray dwell in a battered dump, the form of film dump the place the fixed din of sirens bleeds via the paper-thin partitions. Ray has a giant wall, the kind of film wall the place conspiracies are laid out with plenty of photographs and news clippings and push pins. He’s misplaced ’em. His marbles. The kind of film marbles the place shedding them prompts a person to do some brutal, determined shit. It’s fairly violent. He tosses Rachel within the automobile hoping to get to Canada. The feds are on ’em. They appear to drive for a very long time but it surely’s truly solely like 70 miles, after which they get a motel room. Guess solely an hour handed this time. Keep in mind the man with the knife on the subway? He’s nonetheless on the market, and so are another goons, unlawful-type goons, who are actually on Ray’s ass, however he’s grateful for that fireplace ax on the wall, and for all these MMA knees and fistpunches he is aware of find out how to ship.

What Films Will It Remind You Of?: Sweet Woman is like one thing Stallone may’ve propped up in 1989 if he wasn’t doing, I dunno, Lock Up? It’s additionally like one thing Mark Wahlberg may’ve propped up in 2012 if he wasn’t doing, I dunno, Contraband?

Efficiency Value Watching: I abstain.

Memorable Dialogue: Ray will get deep and philosophical throughout his opening voiceover: “Dad and mom and their kids — the place will we cease and so they start?”

Intercourse and Pores and skin: None.

Our Take: Films don’t get way more B-movie than this film, until the film is Sesame Avenue Presents the Letter B: The Film. That’s not a horrible factor in and of itself, however Sweet Woman is an actual dumhinger that channels your, my, our, EVERYBODY’S rage in opposition to greedy-capitalist lower-than-low exploitative opportunistic big-pharma sons-of-worms right into a barely written action-revenge flick with nothing to say and a plot that’s hacked up for barbecue. Actually, I don’t have any higher strategies for an anti-pharm film than one which indulges a fantasy about hand-slaughtering a corrupt shitbird of a CEO, but it surely lacks the fashion and technical precision to compete with the Extractions and Atomic Blondes of the world, to not point out all of the elite John Wicks and Mission: Unattainables we ought to be rewatching in lieu of this waste of Momoa’s burly charisma.

The movie doesn’t even comply with via on the semi-inspired idea of a father-daughter punchy-kicky wrecking crew; it’s extra like Lone Wolf and Cub if it was the poof-of-air emoji that all of us interpret as being a flatulence cloud. That individual non-development might be defined away by the howler of a nonsensical twist that will torpedo the film if it hadn’t already been torpedoed by its bland half-competent path, cruddy motion sequences and draggy tempo. The rest of the movie after that time is likely one of the least convincing stretches of movie you’ll see all 12 months. After Sweet Woman, you’ll be calling the doc to jot down you up a scrip for the headache.

Our Name: SKIP IT. Go away this one “B.”

John Serba is a contract author and movie critic based mostly in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Learn extra of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or comply with him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Sweet Girl on Netflix