There’s something about that timing of ‘G20’ that makes it more layered and nuanced than it really is. Announced in November 22, the production met delays due to the SAG-AFTRA strike in 2023, the shoot finally began in January 2024 and ended in March of that year. How would director Patricia Riggen, screenwriters Caitlin Parrish, Erica Weiss, Logan and Noah Miller, and producer-star Viola Davis have known that Kamala Harris was to run for president just that July? And that she would lose in November. So, the imagery of Viola Davis as a former military war hero turned President of the United States has statements of could-have-beens and should-have-beens.

In ‘G20,’ Davis plays Danielle Sutton, the President of the United States, who has to lead the G20 summit in South Africa to push for digital currency to help farmers in sub-Saharran conditions worldwide. But the G20 summit is hijacked, and the world leaders are taken hostage by Edward Rutledge (Anthony Starr), a mercenary who wants to rest the world’s economy by calling out all government’s corruption and calling everyone to action by taking their money out of banks and into crypto to take the finances out of government control. Sutton manages to escape and must now use her military training to save herself and the other world leaders of the G20. What complicates matters is that Sutton’s son and daughter are also at the G20, after her daughter Serena (Marsai Martin), cause a scandal back in the US. Coincidentally, Serena is also a computer hacker, which becomes an advantage for Sutton later in the film.

There are shades of ‘Die Hard’ in ‘G20’ and maybe even ‘Air Force One,’ but what ‘G20’ lacks is a full commitment to the silliness of the former or the self-awareness of the latter. ‘Die Hard’ works because it wasn’t meant to be a serious movie. It was serious action, and it was fun watching Bruce Willis take on a hostage situation in his bare feet against a large group of terrorists. It did not have high ambitions, but it was so pure in its drive for entertainment that it worked.

‘Air Force One,’ reflects the end of the American and Russian Cold War and the film managed to navigate those sentiments while giving us a thrilling action piece inside an airplane and it’s always good to see Harrison Ford when he’s committed to the role. Viola Davis has the charm and the gravitas of both Willis and Ford but the film played on too many recognizable tropes – the hacker daughter, the reliable and loyal bodyguard, the traitor – that it didn’t feel too fresh or exciting. At the same time, with the current situation of the world and of America today, it’s so hard-pressed to imagine, even fictional, of America being the savior of anything.

With the current state of geopolitics today, ‘G20’ feels tone deaf and ridiculous as it continues to present itself as the hero in situations of war and conflict. While Rutledge’s actions are to his own benefit and is a sham, his premise that many of the world’s governments are lying to us and exploiting us isn’t as far off as we’d like to think. There are new paradigms at play that is making us think about the world and how our lives are governed in new ways that the film feels like it’s asking us to keep things in the status quo.

It’s unfortunate because Viola Davis is such a powerhouse. Her Danielle Sutton is tired and exhausted, and you can see it in her face, in her posture. The work of the president is weighing on down on her and it’s causing a rift with her children, and she carries it in her gait, her stride. She’s such a pro and she know exactly what kind of movie she’s in and she’s playing it hard without going off synch with the film’s overall tone. I just wished the material was something that could have been extremely fun and entertaining for her and for the audience. The fight scenes were great and there were some really hard-hitting actions, which is always a good thing but there is a gloss in ‘G20’ that takes away from the fear and the thrill. It’s trying to sell us an old story of American possibility, one with a deserving female president of color, but it is unable to create a fiction so compelling that we forget the reality.

My Rating:

Stream G20 now on Prime Video and explore its intense saga.