Tamal Kundu
Intelligent action thrillers are increasingly becoming a rare subgenre of films in an industry that is perfectly content with almost exclusively making high-budgeted superhero flicks. ‘Sweet Girl’ is a cinematic venture that doesn’t invest too much of itself into high-octane action sequences. Instead, it chooses to tell a story rooted in its humanity and is set against the backdrop of an insurmountable antagonist — the pharmaceutical industry. This is what you need to know about the ending of the film. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Sweet Girl Plot Synopsis
The film begins with Ray Cooper (Jason Momoa) running away from the authorities. He climbs on top of the PNC Park. When the FBI officer Sarah Meeker (Lex Scott Davis) tries to convince him to stop and surrender, Ray mutters that it wasn’t supposed to be like this before jumping into the Allegheny River. The plot then shifts to several years earlier.
Ray is a working-class family man living with his wife Amanda (Adria Arjona) and daughter Rachel (Isabela Merced) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But their lives are turned upside down after Amanda is diagnosed with cancer. The family spends all their savings on her treatment. They see a ray of hope when their doctor tells them about an experimental treatment developed by a company named BioPrime. But right before Amanda is administered the treatment, its release gets indefinitely postponed.
BioPrime’s CEO, Simon Keeley (Justin Bartha), is justifiably blamed for this. As his wife slowly dies on the hospital bed, the only thing Ray can do is to seethe with helpless anger. One evening, Keeley appears on a TV program for a live debate with Congresswoman Diana Morgan (Amy Brenneman), a politician that has been highly critical of BioPrime’s business practices. Ray calls the program and threatens to kill Keeley if his wife doesn’t survive.
Amanda dies, and Ray spends the next 6 months trying to bring BioPrime and Keeley to justice. Predictably, he is unsuccessful. One day, a Vice reporter named Martin Bennett (Nelson Franklin) reaches out to tell him that he has found incriminating evidence against BioPrime. Ray is initially reluctant to meet Martin but eventually decides to go. Unbeknownst to him, Rachel follows him. He meets Martin on a subway train. But before Martin can reveal what he knows, an assassin named Amos Santos (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) fatally stabs him. Ray and Amos fight, with Rachel occasionally helping her father. Ultimately, Rachel loses consciousness, and Ray gets stabbed.
Two years later, BioPrime and its drug once more grab Ray and Rachel’s attention as Morgan appears in a press conference with Keeley and the company’s chairperson Vinod Shah (Raza Jaffrey) to announce a bipartisan bill that will “effectively cap the cost of cancer treatment.” Believing that Keeley is responsible for his wife’s death and the attack on him and his daughter, Ray embarks on a warpath. He seemingly kills Keely but not before being told that Shah is behind all this.
But then, when he tries to go after Shah, he discovers that the real person pulling all the strings is someone completely different. After Shah’s death, Ray tries to evade capture and ends up on top of the PNC Park. As Meeker tries to calm the suspect down, the audience is suddenly faced with a stunning revelation that makes them pause and reconsider everything they saw in the film until that point.
Sweet Girl Ending: Is Ray Dead? Who Kills Keeley and His Bodyguard?
Yes, Ray is dead. He succumbed to his injuries after his fight with Amos on the subway train. The person, who kills Keeley and his bodyguard, is Rachel. When she was younger, Rachel was introduced to mixed martial arts by her father, and she quickly proved herself to be a quick learner. At school, she has been part of the debate team and the gymnastic team and even has a 3.5 GPA.
She inadvertently turns herself into a potent weapon after Ray’s death. When Amanda was undergoing treatment, Rachel has endured the same trauma and feeling of helplessness as her father. After her father’s death, she is simply overwhelmed by the enormity of her pain. She starts to believe that her father is still alive, and it is him who is killing all these people. Perhaps, her mind resorts to creating Ray as an alter ego so that she will not lose the last bit of control she has on her sanity.
The people chasing her, both the authorities and Amos, know about this. Meeker establishes contact with the part of her that is still Rachel. At the top of the PNC Park, Meeker uses Rachel’s childhood memories to access the younger girl’s psyche and help her recognize the truth. However, even though Meeker is successful and Rachel becomes Rachel again, the latter realizes that she has come too far and sacrificed too much to turn back now. She has no choice but to see it through and find out why her parents had to die.
Who Kills Ray? Who Hires the Assassin? What Happens to Rachel?
As mentioned above, Amos kills Ray. However, he is just a professional assassin, hired to eliminate everyone that can potentially be a threat to his client. The real perpetrator is Congresswoman Morgan. She has fooled the world into believing that she is a progressive and people-friendly politician imbued with a real passion for changing things for the better. In reality, she is greedy, ruthless, and power-hungry. She took bribes from BioPrime to run her campaigns. She was the one behind BioPrime’s decision to pull the cancer drug from the market. After she discovered that Bennett had found evidence linking her to BioPrime, she sent Amos after him, effectively serving as the catalyst for Ray’s death.
When Morgan realized Rachel killed Keeley, she sent Amos not only to kill the young girl but also to eliminate anyone who knew about her involvement with BioPrime. This included Shah. In the climactic scenes, Rachel kills Amos and records Morgan admitting her crimes. She then gives the recording to the press and Meeker, which leads to Morgan’s arrest. In the movie’s final scenes, Rachel gets on a plane and ventures out into the unknown. She likely has no idea where her path is now taking her. But, at least, she can find some solace in the fact that she has managed to get justice for her parents.
Read More: Sweet Girl Review
