Jason Momoa and Isabela Merced anchor a father-daughter revenge story that works best when it stops chasing the next punch.

Ray Cooper’s wife Diana dies from cancer after a pharmaceutical company blocks her access to an experimental treatment that might have saved her. That loss leaves Ray—played by Jason Momoa—with his teenage daughter Rachel, a company to hate, and nothing much to lose. Sweet Girl begins here, in the space between legitimate outrage and the particular American cinema tradition of a man who is very large and very angry solving problems with his fists.

Directed by Brian Andrew Mendoza in his feature debut, the film arrived on Netflix in August 2021. The script, credited to Philip Eisner and Gregg Hurwitz, places the father-daughter pair in a conspiracy that branches from corporate boardrooms into Capitol Hill. The production settles into Pittsburgh, shot with a grey utility that fits the story’s working-class fury without ever romanticizing it.

The film is at its most effective when it trusts Isabela Merced. Rachel is more than the standard motivation-in-jeopardy role—she is active, observant, and Merced brings more texture to her scenes than the screenplay technically requires. The father-daughter dynamic is the film’s real engine, and the quieter scenes between them land more convincingly than the set-pieces built around Momoa’s considerable physical presence.

The action sequences are competent without being distinctive—clearly staged, physically credible, and largely forgettable in the way that Netflix-era action thrillers often are. Momoa finds a register somewhere between brute force and wounded decency that serves the character; he is more interesting here than the material strictly needs him to be.

Sweet Girl knows exactly what genre it inhabits and doesn’t push against its walls. It won’t be the film anyone mentions first when discussing its stars’ careers, but it moves efficiently and finishes clean. For an evening with nothing particular at stake, it delivers exactly what the premise promises—and then it’s gone.

Tags: Netflix, jason momoa, action thriller, Brian Andrew Mendoza, Isabela Merced

Sweet Girl — a Netflix revenge thriller that finds Jason Momoa at his best in the quiet moments between fights

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