Sweet Girl Movie Review – Sweet twist ruined by sour predictability

By The Numbers

Sweet Girl is a below-average revenge thriller. The plot is pretty formulaic, the action a bit hit or miss and the antagonists are typically underdeveloped. There is one great twist during the third act which is worth mentioning, but it’s not enough to save this one from bland mediocrity.

The story centers on Ray Cooper and his daughter Rachel. The first act is particularly rough around the edges, sporadically jumping through different time periods before finally settling down around 30 minutes into the film. The crux of the drama here stems from Big Pharma and the American healthcare system – both hot topics right now.

Ray finds his family life turned upside down when Amanda is diagnosed with cancer. When a treatment Amanda is reliant on ends up taken off the market indefinitely, Ray is livid and vows to gain revenge on Simon Keeley, the CEO behind the evil pharma company. When Amanda dies, it’s the last straw.

Fast forward through time and Ray stumbles upon a conspiracy that goes all the way up to the highest level of authority. With Rachel by his side, the pair set out to uncover just what’s happening and who the real string pullers are behind all this.

The story takes some serious liberties with its logic though and its not helped by the pedestrian pace and by-the-number character motivations. There really isn’t a lot of depth to this beyond “get revenge for dead wife” while that in itself is fine, it’s never really develops in much detail from that.

While the aforementioned twist is surprising and definitely elevates the movie, Sweet Girl seems to rest all of its hopes on this, rather than generating some memorable characters and segments to go alongside it. Now, the twist does make sense and actually goes some way to explain away the stupid decisions some of these characters make. Beyond that though, it’s about the only noteworthy part of this by-the-numbers thriller.

The action sequences are quite well shot too but they do have a nasty habit of throwing in a lot of shaky cam as well. The musical score, sound design and cinematography are all pretty straight forward, although the editing is a little wonky at times, especially during the first half of the movie.

While Sweet Girl p[resents itself as a sweet distraction and a typical Friday night thriller, there’s nothing all that thrilling about this. Sure, there’s a nice twist but aside from that this film does nothing to elevate itself from the recesses of mediocrity.

 

Read More: Sweet Girl Ending Explained


Feel free to check out more of our movie reviews here!

  • Verdict - 4/10
    4/10
4/10

Leave a comment