Antony Starr, Anthony Anderson, and more co-star in this overstuffed and cliche action extravaganza.
Plot: U.S. President Danielle Sutton must defend her family, fellow leaders and the world when the G20 summit in Cape Town, South Africa is taken over by terrorists
Review: I grew up in the era of Arnold, Stallone, JCVD, Bruce Willis, and, yes, Steven Seagal. Action movies of the 1980s and 1990s had a different flavor than today, but seeing an actor play the President of the United States and kicking terrorists or alien asses was always a fun and exploitative experience. It is impossible to avoid that surge of patriotism as Harrison Ford said, “Get off my plane,” or Bill Pullman declared, “Today we celebrate our Independence Day.” In recent years, Gerard Butler and Channing Tatum have played agents protecting the President and garnering their own action-hero status. Still, it will never replace POTUS wielding a gun or beating the hell out of a bad guy. The Prime Video action flick G20 is designed with all of the 21st-century buzzwords relevant to modern society and technology but still revels in the formula of a 1990s blockbuster movie. Despite Viola Davis more than earning her spot amongst the kick-ass cinematic presidents, G20 is an underwhelming and overly familiar retread of countless generic action movies.
Viola Davis plays Danielle Sutton, a war veteran who ran a successful campaign based on her heroic rescue of a child in Fallujah, which became the cover of Time magazine. With a platform designed to end world hunger, Sutton embarks on a trip to South Africa for the G20 Summit amongst the most wealthy nations to discuss her platform. Accompanied by her husband, Derek (Anthony Anderson), Sutton also brings her children. Son Demetrius (Christopher Farrar) is the quiet, good child, while rebellious Serena (Marsai Martin) is a tech wiz pushing back at her overprotective mother. The quartet makes their way to the summit, which is quickly overrun by terrorist Rutledge (Antony Starr), who has a complicated plan to bilk the world out of their wealth by creating deepfakes of the world leaders. When the attack commences, Sutton and her Secret Service agent, Manny Ruiz (Ramon Rodriguez), get away with a small group as Sutton plots how to return to her family. In the United States, Vice President Harold Mosely (Clark Gregg) begins organizing a response to rescue the President.
G20 spends almost forty minutes building towards the attack on the South African summit, leaving over an hour of action. The film spends little time giving us the backstory of any characters other than Sutton or Rutledge. Still, Viola Davis and Antony Starr share only the last twenty minutes or so on screen together. Early on, we learn that Sutton has a bad knee and does not like wearing fancy dresses or high heels, something she quickly switches out for a sleeveless vest and some big guns. Davis has an enviable physique for a fifty-nine-year-old. Hell, she has an enviable physique for any age group, male or female. Boasting a similar presence as in The Woman King, Davis delivers in all her action scenes, whether hand-to-hand combat or involving gunplay. Davis makes for an impressive leader like Sutton, and the film avoids any callouts involving race or gender. Sutton’s biggest label is as an American, something that makes the patriotism you feel watching a story like this but which will likely feel a bit tone-deaf in global markets considering the recent trade tariffs causing repercussions in the global market.
For his part, Antony Starr embraces an accent that is more in line with his native New Zealand. Starr has made a career out of playing morally ambiguous characters and outright villains. With his slick-back hair and constant smile, Rutledge shares much in common with Starr’s portrayal of Homelander on The Boys. While this character sounds different and sports a beard, you can still see similarities in the roles. As a bad guy with a complicated plan and a grudge against those in power, Starr chews the scenery and looks to be having fun in his role, but he never feels like a threat on par with Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber or Gary Oldman’s Egor Korshunov. The closest comparable villain would be Tommy Lee Jones as William Stranix in Under Siege, but Starr does not get to have the same level of wacky fun in his performance here. So much of the movie is focused on Stratton killing nameless goons and henchmen. At the same time, Rutledge waxes philosophical among his hostages that the final act cannot help but feel anticlimactic.
Directed by Patricia Riggen, G20 is violent and does not avoid dropping a decent amount of profanity, but looks artificial in many other places. A large amount of CGI is used to visualize the hotel where the summit is taking place and sequences set near the White House. Riggen has directed action-oriented projects, including the Antonia Banderas film The 33 and three episodes of Prime Video’s Jack Ryan, but G20 is her biggest project to date. Riggen handles the action scenes well, but nothing is energetic about them. They are competent, but the lackluster script makes it hard to elevate the rest of the material. Veteran Supergirl writer Caitlin Parrish wrote G20 alongside Erica Weiss, Logan Miller, and Noah Miller, who use cryptocurrency and deepfakes as massive technological concepts that immediately feel outdated as part of the core scheme in the film. The fact that the President’s daughter is a skilled enough hacker to combat the plans of a cabal of mercenaries is laughable. Still, so much about G20 is silly, stupid, and ridiculous, including a nonsensical twist in the final act.
G20 is not bad enough to warrant any attention towards its budget or how much it cost. Viola Davis is so much better than this material that it feels like a waste to have her presence be as forgettable as it is. G20 ultimately suffers from doing nothing distinct from the concept of a President going up against a bunch of bad guys, gun in hand. While we can say that the race and gender element is no longer in question when casting the leader of the free world, that does not give this movie a pass for being a boring waste of talent. More forgettable than bad, G20 is another in a long line of movies made for streaming that is not worth watching even if your subscription cost already includes it. This is a movie you can put on in the background and forget about for thirty minutes or more and not miss a beat when you resume paying attention.
G20 is now streaming on Prime Video.
