Bad acting nonsensical plot whats the point of Jason Momoa revenge thriller

SWEET GIRL ★★

MA 15+, 110 minutes

Vengeance is not a sin in Hollywood â€" more like a virtue. It has buttered more Tinseltown bread than all the other sins combined. That’s because vengeance offers old school “justice” â€" the hero rights a great wrong, with extreme prejudice. No trial, no lawyers, no appeal, no worries.

Jason Mamoa and Isabela Merced play a father and daughter out for revenge in Sweet Girl.

This story form has been around since before the Old Testament. It was a staple of westerns. Charles Bronson repackaged it in the 1970s with Chato’s Land (1972) and Death Wish (1974). Liam Neeson refurbished his bank account with it in the Taken series. It’s often a nasty, reactionary genre but not always: The Road to Perdition (2002) was a revenge fantasy worthy of a good novelist.

Jason Momoa, the Hawaiian hunk, has made it his specialty. Here, he takes a fair whack of the plot of Road to Perdition and adds a twist with double pike and lashings of blood. I’m not supposed to reveal that manoeuvre, but it’s a doozy â€" and about as silly as a dog in a tutu.

Momoa doesn’t change much from role to role. He rocks a long-haired biker look, with real facial scars he got when someone glassed him in a fight in Los Angeles in 2008. He started out as a muscular model with a Maori warrior image. His heritage is Polynesian/Native American/German and Irish. He’s not quite cuddly like Dwayne Johnson: more like a heavy metal young Stallone, dealing in blood and bone. He can’t act for toffee, but he’s rarely required to.

In this one, Momoa is Ray Cooper, a loving husband and father, living in Pittsburgh. His wife Amanda (Adria Arjona) dies of cancer, deprived of a new drug treatment by a corrupt Big Pharma company. Ray and ass-kicking daughter Rachel (Isabela Merced) go on the run after Ray attacks the drug company’s boss. They’re pursued by three hitmen, which allows the movie to stop every few minutes for a punch-up. There’s more knife action than usual. That makes it just that bit nastier and more personal for the viewer.

There’s not much point criticising the script. As in a slice of Swiss cheese, holes are to be expected. Almost nothing Ray does makes sense, unless he wants to leave a trail for his opponents to follow. The father-daughter dynamics are soporific and sentimental. The film veers from icky to sticky, as the fake blood flows. If you wanted to design a movie for conspiracy-loving rednecks like the ones who stormed the US Capitol, this would be hard to beat. Momoa takes on the big “they” who control everything. “They” are everywhere. “They” can find him quicker than the FBI; “they” just keep coming.

Part of the finale even takes place in the Pennsylvania legislature, where “they” reside. The plot is wilfully dumb, the message pernicious. Momoa walks through it, his emotions running the gamut from A to… well, just A. Director Brian Mendoza, on debut, is a close friend of the star, which tells us who’s wearing the pants.

Streaming on Netflix from August 20.

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Paul Byrnes is a film critic for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

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