- If my wife dies... it's your death sentence.
Sweet Girl is a 2021 American action thriller film released on Netflix, starring Jason Momoa and Isabela Merced.
Ray (Momoa) is living a happy life in Pittsburgh with his wife Amanda (Adria Arjona) and daughter Rachel (Merced), when his wife develops cancer and ends up dying because a large pharmaceutical company pulls the miracle drug that could save her life. Later, Ray is contacted by a journalist who has uncovered a conspiracy to profit behind the company's actions. After the journalist is murdered, Ray decides to investigate things himself. Unfortunately, his daughter follows.
There is a sizeable spoiler/plot twist in this movie, so this is your warning before perusing the tropes.
See the trailer
here.
Sweet Girl contains examples of the following tropes:
- Action Girl: One of Rachel's introductory scenes is at a boxing club receiving lessons from her father and ends up joining forces with him to avenge her mother's death. This is taken up to eleven by the plot twist.
- Affably Evil: Santos, the hitman, doesn't seem to mind at all finishing his meal and having a chat with the protagonist.
- Arc Words: The song "Sweet Child of Mine" by Guns N' Roses. in a reference to the movie title.
- Corrupt Politician: Diana Morgan at first seems like an honest politician fighting to get Americans affordable medications. However, it turns she's taken bribes by the same pharmaceutical company she starts out fighting, and even ordered the murder of a journalist looking into this.
- Crusading Widower: Ray, after the death of his wife...or so you are led to think...
- Dead Star Walking: Literally. Jason Momoa dies early on in the movie. Isabela Merced takes the lead and what following scenes he has are just hallucinations.
- Deadline News: The reporter who tells Ray about the coverup dies fairly quickly.
- Foreshadowing:
- The tagline itself, "Family fights as one." The Plot Twist is that Ray has been Rachel this entire time, seeking revenge for the deaths of her mother and her father, whom she has been hallucinating herself as.
- Jason Momoa is a big guy, yet Ray consistently struggles with opponents that are half his size. In reality, the dynamic is reversed, and Rachel is the one fighting at a size disadvantage.
- Ray meets Santos in a diner and they have a conversation as rivals. During the conversation, Santos claims he can relate to Ray's pain and then tells a story about how he witnessed powerful people slaughter his whole village, including his parents. He claims he spent his life afterwards hunting them down and getting revenge, only to realize in this world, there will always be big fish eating the little fish. The story seems out of place, since Ray's Roaring Rampage of Revenge is about his wife dying of cancer when she could have been treated. However, Rachel going on such a rampage to avenge the death of both her parents by powerful people, makes the comparison between her and Santos make a lot more sense.
- Implacable Man: Everyone in the film seems to be held up by distances and travel except Santos the hitman, who can always end up exactly where he needs to be.
- Multi-Gendered Split Personalities: Rachel has dissociative identity disorder, hallucinating that she is her father.
- Orphan's Ordeal: You'll see that the apartment after the subway train scene is worn and broken. The person paying the rent isn't doing well.
- Papa Wolf: The entire premise of the film, where Ray fights to protect his daughter Rachel from the people responsible for his wife's death. This is inverted by the Plot Twist, where it's revealed that Ray had actually died in his first and only attempt to do so; it's Rachel who seeks justice for the deaths of her parents.
- Parental Abandonment: By the end, it turns out Rachel has lost both her parents, as Ray was actually killed by the hitman after her mother died from cancer and she's been hallucinating that she's him.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Rachel is a short, fairly small young woman who remains capable of holding her own against bigger opponents due to the intensive training in combat she received from her father.
- Predatory Big Pharma: Ray's wife and Rachel's mother dies of cancer because the pharmaceutical company that was making the miracle medication that was curing her pulled it in order to make money. Diana Morgan also turned to the dark side, and away from her initial goal of affordable healthcare, after taking bribes from the company.
- Room Full of Crazy: There's a wall with strings connecting the pharmaceutical company's deeds.
- Spoiler Title: If the story is about Ray versus Big Pharma, why is the title "Sweet Girl"? Hmm....
- The Reveal: Ray died from his wounds. The whole movie has actually been Rachel, as shown in the Flashback.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: Ray died. You're seeing the whole movie past his death as his daughter hallucinating her father being there.
- Where It All Began: Rachel lying on a bench at the Allegheny T station, hallucinating about her father who died at that same spot.
- Withholding the Cure: What the pharmaceuticals company is doing, for profit to drive up prices.
