When does the Die Hard format of action thrillers finally have enough distinctive entries to officially branch off and form a splinter sub-genre of its own. I only ask because after decades of examples, surely action movies featuring the President Of The United States has had enough installments to qualify it as its own thing rather just slapping the “Die Hard” label on everything. Just do the math; Harrison Ford, Aaron Eckhart, Samuel L. Jackson and Jamie Fox have each portrayed a form of POTUS who have rolled up their sleeves and have waded into the breech to make the world safe by ridding a particular location of nasty terrorist types, but now we can add Viola Davis to that list thanks to MGM/Amazon’s latest direct to streaming effort, G20.
In the ever expanding realm of female led action movies that seem to be seeping out of every streaming service every couple of months, have we got one that can find the balance needed to see a woman president believably breaking noses while she bust polls?
On the eve of the G20 summit being held in South Africa, American President Danielle Sutton is readying her plan to try and convince other, skeptical, world leaders to back her controversial play to help empower sub-Saharan farmer by giving them access to digital currency. However, she’s getting increasingly frustrated over the rebellious actions of her daughter, Serena who may have the smarts to get by the secret service to duck out at night and hang out with her friends, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t getting caught on camera living it up in a bar and going viral, which tends to make the Madam President look embarrassingly weak.
When the summit starts, she’s flanked by her mostly united family (husband Derek and younger son Demetrius round out the set) and her Treasurey Secretary, Joanne Worth and Sutton hopes to lean on her previous military experience to muscle her way through to the more stubborn detractors to her plan, however, it soon becomes evident that she’s got more dangerous opposition in the building when it’s revealed that the bulk of her security team are actually private contractors actually taking orders from former Aussie Special Forces Corporal, Edward Rutledge, who hopes to sabotage Sutton’s plan in order to crash the world banks and make a killing on Bitcoin by creating panic by using Deepfakes of world leaders to make people panic.
While those of us over forty-five try to head their head around such a plan, everyone involved finds themselves playing the Die Hard/Air Force One game as Danielle manages to escape the initial attack with loyal Secret Service Agent Manny Ruiz and the UK Prime Minister, the First Lady of South Korea and the head of the International Monetary Fund in tow. Can the Commander in Chief manage to save the summit, salvage the crashing economy and rescue her own family while putting as many terrorists in the dirt as she can?
So once again it’s time to throw a critical eye over yet another female-led action film that’s debuted on streaming and I have to be honest, the recent slate hasn’t really been fighting the good fight particularly well. It’s frustrating because not only does repeatedly trashing make me look shitty, but it overshadows the good work done by Sigourney Weaver, Linda Hamilton, Geena Davis, Charlize Theron and Anya Taylor-Joy that emphatically prove that women can totally carry an actioner. In fact, one reason that I was hoping that G20 would include itself as one of the better examples was the presence of Viola Davis who already put in the hard graft proving that she can break faces and pop spines with the best of them thanks to 2022’s The Woman King. Of course, watching her as an iron willed African warrior woman in the 1820s is subtly different than seeing her as the leader of the free world, but while G20 certainly has its flaws, it manages to follow the action hero President tropes closely enough to provide a fun, but slightly unremarkable ride.
For a start, Davis gets absolutely no notes on her POTUS portrayal as she inbues her version of the prez with all the steely edge and vulnerable moments that you’d expect as she struggles to juggle her kids, other world leaders and gun totting terrorists in a way that refuses to take the easy way out. However, some may be a little disappointed that director G20 has tried to go the Harrison Ford, everyperson route when the actual plot is freakin’ bananas that throw in a nefarious villain plan that involves weaponizing Bitcoin and hinging success on tricking everyone with Deepfakes of world leaders in order to make some serious green.
The issue is that for a scheme that’s so knee-jerk and painfully relevant, you’d think that director Patricia Riggen might also exagerate the action to a more overtly cartoonish level to the point where you wouldn’t be that surprised if Gerard Butler suddenly wandered in. Interestingly, however, the movie instead takes more of a grittier, cat & mouse approach and also loads Davis’ character up with doubts and vulnerabilities in an effort to give her hero more dimension. As a result, anyone hoping to see the actress tear through the baddies like Bruce Banner ripping a shirt may be a bit fidgety at how much the movie strains to stop her from being lethal kill machine. A lot of it works really well, especially a moment where she confesses to the blustering Prime Minister that the famous, military photo of her rescuing a child that she based her run on isn’t as cut and dried as it first appeared and even though the casting of Anthony Anderson as her spouse may seem a little counterintuitive considering his comic background, it doesn’t swamp the plot despite her tech savvy daughter being predictably vital to saving the day.
In comparison, Anthony Starr’s typically intense villain does feel like he’s waiting for Gerard Butler to storm in and belt him in the face with a heavy handed one-liner and although it’s nice to hear something close to his original accent New Zealand accent (even though he’s playing Australian), his character’s motivations are a little sketchy and it’s never really clearly defined what is actually driving him as he continually flips between standard greedy psycho, damaged revenge seeker, or misguided social warrior.
The action is fine and the pace is decent, but aside from Davis’ central performance, there’s nothing else to be found within G20 to make it stand out from the rest of the group and chances are you’ll probably be able to predict virtually every plot shift the movie throws at you. However, Viola Davis holds strong and watching her fight the good fight equipped with weapons grade gravitas, a machine gun and a fetching red dress/kevlar jacket combo finished off with a pair of sneakers makes the whole enterprise fairly worth it.
White House Dame.
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