Sweet Girl star Jason Momoa’s screen career includes some impressive highs and regrettable lows, so how do the actor’s efforts rank in comparison with each other? Long before he became instantly recognizable as the DCEU’s Aquaman, blockbuster Jason Momoa was known to television fans as the short-lived Game of Thrones heartthrob Khal Drogo. However, this was not the start of the actor’s screen career.
Before Game of Thrones, Momoa has been catapulted to the big time by earning the title role in a Conan the Barbarian reboot. However, despite boasting the director of Friday the 13th’s then-recent remake, Conan the Barbarian arrived a bit before R-rated fantasy action was profitable. This costly flop held back Momoa’s ascent for a few years, leading the actor to take on more indie roles as he built up an impressive small-screen pedigree.
This led to a love of independent cinema for Momoa, who has continued to star in indie movies ever since even after the role of Aquaman’s Arthur Curry came calling. Nowadays, Momoa balances his time between smaller, more personal projects like Sugar Mountain and The Bad Batch and big-budget mainstream fare like the Aquaman movies and Sweet Girl. However, as fans of Idris Elba’s movies can attest, sometimes smaller-scale efforts can be as flawed as starry blockbusters. With that in mind, the release of Sweet Girl is as good an opportunity as any to look back on the actor’s mixed bag of screen efforts and rank every Jason Momoa movie from worst to best.
The worst of Momoa’s movies comes, unusually, from the midpoint of his screen career. 2014's Debug sees Momoa play one of half a dozen computer hackers stranded on an abandoned spaceship that are tricked by a malicious AI attempting to gain sentience. This goofy sci-fi thriller from 2014 wants to be a more kinetic, action-forward spin on Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, but unfortunately, the action is leaden, the premise is over-familiar, and the dialogue is too goofy to take seriously.
An indie eco-thriller/drama effort from very early in Momoa’s screen timeline, Pipeline is among the most forgotten of the actor’s screen outings. Directed by Kiss and Tell helmer Jordan Alan, Pipeline stars the director’s real-life wife/Friday the 13th star Amanda Righetti and Momoa as two of five friends with a dark secret. Years before the movie began, six kids swam out to the titular Banzai pipeline but, after an accident that haunts their adult lives, only five came home. There is plenty of potential for Pipeline to be a haunting, Lake Mungo-esque exploration of grief and loss, but this forgettable effort, unfortunately, fails to capitalize on its solid cast.
Released in 2004, Johnson Family Vacation was a thin retread of the National Lampoon’s Vacation movies with Cedric the Entertainer taking over the Chevy Chase role. This road trip comedy is not devoid of laughs and has a handful of inspired moments (such as Momoa’s big-screen debut as a hunky Native American who captures the attention of the hero’s wife and daughter), but it is uneven and far from original. Cedric the Entertainer is better suited to playing larger-than-life supporting characters than a beleaguered everyman, and much of the movie’s quintessentially mid-‘00s comedy leaves Johnson Family Vacation feeling like a bad Adam Sandler movie.
“John Wick meets Die Hard With A Vengeance” sounds like an inspired premise, and the central conceit of Once Upon A Time In Venice is undeniably fun. Bruce Willis is a world-weary private investigator whose dog is kidnapped by Momoa’s vengeful drug lord, sending him on a string of blackly comic misadventures to retrieve the poor pup. So far, so “Shane Black meets Seven Psychopaths.” Unfortunately, a sleepwalking Willis and uninspired direction from Cop Out scribe Mark Cullen mean this action/comedy/thriller is never thrilling, funny, or action-packed enough to justify its existence, nor mean enough to leave much of an impact.
There is nothing outright wrong with Braven, the tale of Momoa’s mild-mannered logger and his father renting a cabin and falling afoul of drug traffickers. However, the 2018 action thriller fails to offer the suspense and twisty shocks of Below Zero, a similarly small-scale siege thriller, while also lacking the goofy charm of Becky, a superficially similar effort that made the ingenious decision to cast its antihero as a troubled teenage girl instead of a hulking everyman. Momoa is too tough and imposing to work as a harmless family man and Stephen Lang is doubly miscast as his aging father, making this a passable action effort that few viewers would be sad to miss out on.
If Braven needed more inspiration, then 2015’s Wolves could arguably have done with less. The story of Lucas Till’s likable teen outcast trying to unearth his family’s secret heritage after losing his parents soon unexpectedly turns into an action/thriller/horror/sort-of-western hybrid as he encounters a pack of small-town werewolves. Not as goofily earnest as the Twilight saga's sequels, nor as winking and self-referential as True Blood, Wolves struggles to justify its existence as the movie is never entirely certain what tone it wants to take and what genre it belongs to. That said, Momoa is a delight as the villainous (and unsubtly named) Connor Slaughter and Till makes for a compelling protagonist, with the pair’s performances largely salvaging this otherwise uneven effort.
Released by Netflix in August 2021, Sweet Girl is an action thriller that saw Momoa take on the role of a heartbroken dad who vows to protect his daughter after his wife’s death. This being an action movie, said daughter is inevitably endangered and her beloved musclebound dad fights his way through a slew of goons to save her in a thriller that could have been solid were it not for Sweet Girl’s misjudged final twist. The wild reveal, which can stand shoulder to shoulder with Switchblade Romance in terms of jaw-dropping last-second shocks, re-contextualizes the third act and renders Sweet Girl a touch too silly for its own good, if still watchable.
Like the similarly trashy, late-career action star efforts Get the Gringo and From Paris With Love, 2012’s Sylvester Stallone action thriller Bullet to the Head received a largely negative review from critics upon release. As was the case for those above-mentioned thrillers, the critical consensus was wrong. As the title implies, Bullet to the Head is an unabashedly gory, dark action thriller from 48 Hrs director Walter Hill that harkens back to the gritty, R-rated golden age of action-packed cop comedies. An assassin and a cop join forces to take down a drug lord, but the plot is mostly window dressing for "Tarantino meets Rambo"-style blackly comic action and inspired set pieces. Better than its reputation, Bullet to the Head only ranks so low due to Momoa’s unfairly brief villainous role.
2011’s Conan the Barbarian was met with critical disdain and, much like the similarly gory ‘80s throwback Bullet to the Head, did little to deserve its ignominious reputation. As far as action-forward ‘80s franchise revivals directed by Marcus Nispel go, this sword and sorcery fantasy is a lot better than 2009’s Friday the 13th, and the added brutality helps this retread set itself apart from the original 1982 movie of the same name. Momoa is a more brutish and compelling Conan than The Terminator's Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rose McGowan and Stephen Lang offer appropriately campy support in their respective roles, and the violent action is a fun, fast-paced affair. An overlong runtime keeps Conan the Barbarian low on this rundown, but it is another underrated outing for Momoa that was unfairly dismissed by fun-averse critics.
One of the more divisive entries on this rundown, 2016’s Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice was arguably the most quintessentially Zack Snyder of the earlier DCEU cinematic efforts. Darker and grittier than its predecessor Man of Steel, this action extravaganza was either likably over-the-top or unreasonably self-serious depending on the reviewer, and infamously split both critics and audiences upon release. For his part, Momoa’s brief Aquaman introduction is stellar, but then, the actor wasn’t saddled with a “Martha” moment to ignite a half-decade of fandom wars during his brief cameo.
Unfairly underrated, 2016’s Sugar Mountain is a wilderness survival movie that turns out to be an entirely different, twistier sort of thriller than the movie initially appears to be. To say any more would mean spoiling some of Sugar Mountain’s many big surprises but suffice to say that this indie thriller deserved a better reception than the middling-to-negative reviews it received upon release. Tense, blackly comic in places, and agreeably silly, Sugar Mountain throws together a pair of dim-witted antiheroes (Drew Roy and Shane Coffey), a shrewd sheriff (the always-welcome Cary Elwes), and a tough criminal (an appropriately larger-than-life Momoa) for a twisty thriller that doesn’t quite come together perfectly, but has energy and invention to spare.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League likely needs no introduction, and the merits and flaws of the lone-awaited blockbuster have been discussed to death in the months since its delayed release. For his part, Momoa manages to make his lighter version of Aquaman fit the world of Snyder’s brooding antiheroes without sacrificing his sense of humor, an achievement that makes up for his limited screen time in this four-hour effort. It’s far from the Aquaman actor’s best screen turn, but the Joker-redeeming Snyder Cut of Justice League does offer Momoa fans a more serious side of Arthur Curry, as well as an undeniably immersive vision from one of superhero cinema’s most influential helmers.
A truly bizarre but undeniably original dystopian thriller from A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night director Ana Lily Amirpour, The Bad Batch tells the tale of a young drifter who encounters a host of bizarre and dangerous characters as she wanders a wasteland outside of Texas after being exiled sometime in the near future. Momoa plays her cannibal tribe leader love interest, Jim Carrey shows up as a hermit who can cure the sick, and Keanu Reeves puts in a typically offbeat turn as a cult leader living with a harem of pregnant women like a more mellow Immortan Joe. Speaking of Mad Max: Fury Road, The Bad Batch’s biggest issue is its surprisingly languid pacing, which has none of the urgency viewers have come to expect from dystopian sci-fi. However, taken on its own terms as a strange satirical cult oddity, The Bad Batch is a compelling, hard-to-forget journey with shades of El Topo and other trippy acid westerns.
Admittedly, Aquaman has only got a momentary cameo in The Lego Movie 2. However, it is a very funny appearance in a very funny sequel, and Momoa fits into the world of blocks and broad, silly sight gags as well as he acclimated to the world of Zack Snyder’s self-serious, dark super-heroics. For much of its charming runtime, The Lego Movie 2 is an inspired riff on both time travel sci-fi and the Tom Hardy-starring Mad Max: Fury Road-style post-apocalyptic dystopia, and while it doesn’t reach the inspired heights of its predecessor, it’s a rare sequel worth watching on its own merits.
Momoa’s directorial debut Road To Paloma is a gritty sad Neo-Western about a troubled Native American man’s journey to avenge his late mother. With shades of Hell Or High Water, Easy Rider, and Thunder Heart, Road To Paloma’s dark road trip story may not be as deep as its inspirations but it has heart and a loose, naturalistic feel that harkens back to the early ‘70s, as well as some stunning cinematography. Road To Paloma is not as unapologetically polemical as its clearest inspiration, 2005’s The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, but Momoa’s Wolf is a compelling antihero and the movie has a refreshingly harsh but lyrical tone that can’t be found in the rest of the actor’s oeuvre.
Horror director James Wan, best known for his contributions to The Conjuring and Saw franchises, may have seemed an unlikely choice to direct Momoa as Aquaman in 2018’s sea-set superhero epic. However, the helmer was also responsible (alongside Justin Lin) for the Fast & Furious franchise’s switch from grounded racing melodrama to high-concept, ludicrous action antics, and he pulled off a similarly impressive tonal transformation for the previously grim and self-serious DCEU with Aquaman. Simultaneously ambitious, epic in scope, and surprisingly silly, light-hearted, and unapologetically fun, the story of Arthur Curry/Aquaman, the half-Atlantean king of the sea is the star vehicle Momoa spent his career waiting for. Fortunately, the actor doesn’t disappoint as the likable, if reluctant, hero and Aquaman is a fittingly breezy, charming blockbuster tailor-made for Jason Momoa's persona.
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August 31, 2021 at 12:36AM
