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Sweet Girl was directed by Brian Andrew Mendoza, written by Gregg Hurwitz and Philip Eisner, and stars Jason Momoa, Isabela Merced, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Raza Jeffrey, Amy Brenneman, Justin Bartha, and Adria Arjona. It’s about a father who fights a corrupt pharmaceutical system responsible for the death of his wife, while protecting his daughter from those who want him stopped.

The Plot: It’s not hard to craft a sturdy revenge story, and with the right target, it gets even easier. Hurwitz and Eisner start out on a competent if rote track but go completely off the rails with some third act buffoonery.

After a live-saving drug is pulled off the market via a paid deal from pharmaceutical company BioPrime’s executive, Keeley (Bartha), Ray (Momoa) is forced to watch his wife Amanda (Arjona) succumb to cancer and subsequently raise his daughter Rachel (Merced) on his own. Some months later, a journalist with enough proof to go public about BioPrime’s criminal exploits is killed by hitman Amos (Garcia-Rulfo) in front of Ray, setting him on the warpath. While the writing of the setup is a bit bland, it has a clear destination, and sets up a subplot involving Congresswoman Morgan (Brenneman) for later.

One of two surprises contained in Sweet Girl’s plot is Keeley’s place within it – he’s killed in short order, but not before revealing that his business partner Shah (Jeffrey) is more responsible for the financial decisions than he is. Of course, with that out of the way, the movie progresses as any number of action movies with a conspiracy bent do, (Morgan’s presence indicates exactly what you think it does) and everything falls into place as expected while Ray and Rachel evade the police, FBI, and hitmen like Amos, and work their way up the criminal ladder, doling out justice on the way.

For the first hour, it’s a competent but forgettable plot, but after a twist in the late game changes the perspective of these events, everything falls apart. Admittedly, it’s a twist that few will see coming, but that’s because it’s so brazenly stupid and, in the grand scheme of things, changes little.

The Characters: Hurwitz and Eisner don’t have a new slant on the parties involved in Sweet Girl’s story either. While they at first seem game to invest in a character development, their focus drops like a rock, leaving any studying to the first 20 minutes.

Ray is a character that plays to Momoa’s strengths. Via hiking, camping, and otherwise spending time with his family outdoors, he maintains a soft heart and hard body maintaining a soft heart and hard body, but the script goes no further than this. Although there’s a scene dedicated to his vulnerable side when Amanda passes, he’s effectively the same archetype on display in countless other action movies.

Rachel is sidelined for most of the movie’s middle section, but there’s nothing that fleshes her out in a meaningful way at either end of the runtime. She’s more apprehensive about vengeance than Ray, despite her suspicions of corruption on behalf of BioPrime. Some montages detail her boxing prowess, but Sweet Girl has no intention of detailing the father/daughter relationship following the mother’s death, leaving Rachel poorly rendered.

Antagonistic forces are transparently slimy, but that’s fine in a movie that focuses on its heroes. However, because this movie doesn’t do that, the conflict between characters falls flat. Performances could’ve made up for some of this, but everyone is as bland as the characters they portray.

The Action: Stunt coordinator Jon Valera and fight coordinator Jeremy Marinas are supremely talented in their fields, but when a first-time director is in charge of the action, any talent can get muddled in the mix. Sweet Girl has brief encounters and a few setpieces, but their generic handling makes all of them immanently forgettable.

In an attempt to keep the proceedings somewhat grounded, the first action scene is over in a flash, but it doesn’t feel grounded in the way it aspires to be. While the stabbing of the journalist who contacts Ray is believable and out of nowhere, the fight between Ray and Amos is entirely opposite. With Momoa in the role, it’s hard to concede that a one-on-one fight would end in any way aside from a decisive victory for the father. Because it doesn’t, it feels contrived for the sake of the narrative.

Most of the movie’s major setpieces are fine, but none of them stick out as a whole. One of the better moments is an early one in a hotel where a rifle sling becomes a key component of the fight, ending with a hitman’s neck breaking as a punctuation, and another is the use of a backhoe to interrupt Shah’s convoy from getting him to safety, but these admittedly cool moments can’t uphold otherwise subpar action.

Over an hour passes before the quantity of action scenes increases, but by the 75-ish minute mark, the twist has presented itself and the ensuing ones go from palatable but forgettable to nonsensical. Not necessarily because the direction and choreography get worse, but because the reality of the situation causes whatever fun there initially was to buckle under the preposterous nature of Sweet Girl’s final act.

The Technics: Streaming giants may have raised their budgetary limitations in recent years, but the assembly line nature of their output hasn’t. Paired with a fresh-faced director and weak script, Sweet Girl is just another “nothing” production on the back end.

Any movie with weak substance should at least have a strong foundation to maintain a reason to watch it. Visually, there’s nothing to incentivize a full sit-down, as Barry Ackroyd’s usual handheld approach to cinematography isn’t carefully implemented and adds nothing thematically or stylistically, and the settings are sparsely filled rural locations at best and listless woods at worst. Even the color palette is drab, with greys, browns, and blues composing almost every scene, making for a wholly uninteresting viewing experience.

Runtime and editing shouldn’t have been a problem here, but both gradually degrade the movie anyway. The runtime is perfect on paper, providing enough time to fully develop a familial relationship and detail a web of corruption and conspiracy, but the script doesn’t have any real meat on its bones, forcing a pointless FBI investigation subplot into the mix to round out the runtime. A tighter edit would have sufficed, but with the slot-filling nature of the production, it’s not surprising that the filmmakers and Netflix would keep it running ragged instead of light-footed.

Another in a long list of streaming service filler vehicles, Sweet Girl has the bare minimum to justify its own existence. It’s acceptably presented and has a functional script, but it’s a forgettable addition to the action genre due to its aggressive nothingness.

35/100