Jason Momoa is one of those action stars who still manages to have a relatable Average Joe vibe. That's an impressive feat for a guy who looks like a six-foot-four Grecian demigod with a manbun. Now he gets to demonstrate his chops in a tepid thriller that liberally cribs elements from better movies.

In Sweet Girl, Momoa plays Ray Cooper, a martial arts enthusiast whose wife is dying of cancer. An affordable generic medication that has the potential to save her life is coming to market, but it suddenly gets delayed without explanation. There are suspicions that a douchebag pharmaceutical CEO bribed the manufacturer to keep the current treatments expensive. Ray calls a talk show where the CEO is a guest and threatens to kill him if his wife dies.

Sure enough, Mrs. Cooper dies before the cheap medication becomes available. Ray's grief manifests as barely controlled rage. His daughter Rachel (Isabela Merced) tries to keep him out of trouble.

A reporter contacts Ray claiming to have evidence of crimes involving the CEO. They arrange a clandestine meeting. The reporter sends Ray on a circuitous route through a train station to make sure he wasn't followed. Meanwhile, Rachel follows him. I found myself wondering, if neither the reporter nor Ray noticed Ray's daughter, what hope do they have of spotting a professional tail?

Welp, it turns out I was right to wonder. An assassin pops out of the background and stabs the reporter to death. Ray and Rachel are both injured in the ensuing fight scene.

Sometime later, Ray crashes a charity event and kills the CEO. The cops quickly notice that a guy named Ray Cooper once threatened to do exactly that on live television. It doesn't take much longer to find the specific Ray Cooper whose wife died of cancer between the television show and the murder. Ray and Rachel go on the lam. The cops are the least of their trouble; assassins are on their trail, too, including the one who killed the reporter.

The last third of the movie introduces a plot twist that holds its water poorly. Without spoiling it too much, it changes the action star from Momoa to Merced. I was invested enough to finish watching, but the twist seemed forced and unnecessary. The dynamic between Ray and Rachel helped give the story some weight, and they threw it away in service of an implausible gimmick. In a movie whose story was already hanging together by a string, this last turn is disastrous.

Sweet Girl still kinda works as an action movie, but in some alternate universe, there's a version with a better ending.

6 out of 10.

Seen on Netflix.