Jason Momoa has the #1 most popular movie on Netflix right now. Action thriller Sweet Girl debuted on the streaming platform this past Friday and it’s immediately shot right to the top of the charts. Though the film was met with mostly negative reviews from critics, that hasn’t stopped from checking out the Netflix original this weekend, likely thanks to the presence of the Aquaman star in the lead.
Sweet Girl follows Momoa as Ray Cooper, whose wife Amanda (Adria Arjona) died from cancer after a potentially life-saving drug was pulled from the market by a corrupt pharmaceutical CEO (Justin Bartha). Two years on and Ray has become consumed by his single-minded, and increasingly bloody, quest for vengeance, while protecting the only family he has left, his daughter Rachel (Isabela Merced).
While Netflix users are clearly lapping it up, critics haven’t been so kind, with it being labelled as both a little generic and yet guilty of a wild, M. Night Shyamalan-style final twist. That said, praise has been given to the strong performances Momoa and Merced (Dora and the Lost City of Gold) in the lead. Rotten Tomatoes has awarded it a critics score of an embarrassingly low 21% at the time of writing, on the back of 34 reviews. The critics consensus reads: “Burdened with action clichés and tripped up by a late plot twist, Sweet Girl wastes a potentially resonant story and some solid work from its well-matched leads.”
Let’s hope Momoa’s next movie fares a lot better in the review department. The DC icon joins the likes of Timothee Chalamet, Zendaya, Josh Brolin and Rebecca Ferguson in Denis Villeneuve’s A-lister-filled Dune, which hits theaters and HBO Max on October 22nd. Jason Momoa is currently shooting Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, out December 2022, in the UK.
Sweet Girl can be streamed on Netflix worldwide.