Sweet Girl (2021)

Sweet Girl has the rare gift of feeling both bruisingly physical and emotionally raw, the kind of action-thriller that throws real grief into the ring with real fists. Brian Andrew Mendoza keeps the pace tight and urgent, staging scrappy, close-quarters fights and chases that land with a blunt, street-level impact rather than glossy superhero polish. Jason Momoa brings a grounded charisma that makes the crusade feel personal, and Isabela Merced matches him with a fierce, lived-in intensity that gives the father-daughter bond genuine weight. It’s not a subtle film and it asks you to go with some heightened genre turns, but if you want a revenge story with heart, momentum, and satisfyingly hard-hitting set pieces, it’s an easy one to queue up.

Sweet Girl wants to be a gritty, righteous revenge thriller about a grieving husband taking on corporate corruption while keeping his daughter safe, and on paper that’s a solid setup. The problem is it leans hard on familiar action-thriller beats and thin character work, so the emotional weight it’s aiming for often feels forced rather than earned. It also hinges on a big late-game narrative swing that will either strike you as bold or make you feel like the movie pulled the rug out from under its own story. If you’re mainly here for Jason Momoa’s physical presence and some competent, bruising fights, you’ll get your money’s worth; if you want a tightly written conspiracy drama with believable motives and payoff, this probably isn’t your film.