The main problem here is that—as written by Philip Eisner and Gregg Hurwitz, and directed by first-time feature filmmaker Brian Edward Mendoza—”Sweet Girl” is too long and disorganized, and often just too much, for its own good. It seems to want to be five, possibly six landmark 1990s and early aughts blockbusters at once. You’ll recognize which ones every time a pilfered action beat or plot twist arrives, but let’s just say that “The Fugitive,” the “Terminator” movies, and the Jason Bourne films loom large, as well as any popular blockbuster where the storytelling cheats to create a whopping surprise that nobody could see coming because truth be told, it’s kinda dumb. “Sweet Girl” clocks in at nearly two hours, but there’s a tighter, less derivative, more powerful movie in there—possibly a working-class-hero legal drama like “Dark Waters” or “Erin Brockovich,” except the lead character is a bruiser who can put another man’s head through a wall.
The story begins, alas, with a flash-forward to Ray on a bridge being entreated to give himself up, then cuts to several years earlier, when Ray, his wife Amanda (Adria Arjona) and his daughter Rachel (played in a younger incarnation by Milena Rivero) are devastated by Amanda’s cancer diagnosis. The film speeds through Amanda’s deterioration, skipping ahead to the phase where she’s hairless and disabled, essentially watching the clock in a treatment center. There’s a generic drug that just got FDA approval that’s far more affordable than the name-brand version, and Amanda is eligible for it, but the possibility is cruelly snatched away when the head of the pharmaceutical company abruptly withdraws it from market. There are intimations that a payoff was involved. In a sure-to-be-crowd-pleasing moment, Ray calls into a TV talk show that’s interviewing the CEO, Justin Bartha’s Simon Keeley, and tells him he’s coming for him. Then he makes good on his promise.
What’s initially fascinating about “Sweet Girl” is that even though it gives us a hero with commando-level combat training, it makes him a real person who stumbles and fails and has to recover from injuries, and turns him loose in a real world where guys like Keeley have tons of security, and the laws of both economics and physics prevent enemies from easily getting close enough to inflict a killing blow. On top of that, this film is not set in a comic-book universe where actions have no consequences. The first time Ray tries and fails at doing something, he’s marked by the authorities as a deadly threat to the greater good, and he and his daughter spend the vast majority of the film on the run from the authorities, calling significant allies on shadily-acquired burner phones delivered to remote stretches of woodlands where the duo is living out of Ray’s vintage muscle car.
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