Review: 'G20'
A terrorist siege flick that breaks many of the expected cliches of the genre.
As the first seconds of the opening credits of Amazon’s new action-thriller, G20, begin, I get a sinking feeling. Black screen, and that low rhythmic, thriller-style music promising something scary, tense, and possibly world-shattering is about to happen.
Spies are on the move, and it’s not very original.
And as promised, we’re taken to a European city. A spy is on the run with the obligatory high-tech gizmo: a “crypto wallet” that will be our McGuffin for the story to come. She is chased by the villain, a sinister, cold-hearted killer who goes by the name of Rutledge (played by Antony Starr).
Meanwhile, on another continent, the president of the United States, Danielle Sutton (played by Viola Davis), is awoken in the middle of the night. It’s on, and the pieces are moving.
It’s an opening that promises anything but originality. We’ve seen them before, in hundreds of thrillers throughout the years — many of them starring Gerard Butler! But through clever writing and editing, G20 sets us up for a cliche, only to gracefully sidestep and dodge that bullet.
For as Rutledge catches and eliminates his target, the president’s staff gives her an update. We got her. Who? Surely not the target who now lies dead in a European nightclub. No, the president’s daughter, who snuck away from her Secret Service guard in the middle of the night to party with friends.
So in one quick prologue that pulls the rug out from under our cliche-filled expectations from watching too many of these thrillers, we’re introduced to the dangerous villain at large, his plot, the president and her family, including her rebellious teenage daughter. Nice!
Looking at the poster for G20, I wasn’t very hopeful. Here we have Viola Davis, armed to the teeth in a torn red dress, confidently striding towards the camera with the massive figure of “The Beast” — the president’s armored luxury sedan — looming up behind her, US flags and all.
It’s an image that might get some fist-pumps from our friends over in the US, but for us Europeans — yours truly included — it is, like many other things across the pond, cringe-inducing.
But that opening sequence — setting up typical cliches only to pull them away at the last moment — seems to be what this film is going for. That’s not to say that the typical political thriller cliches and stereotypes aren’t present. They are, but for the most part, they’re not as blatant as in certain other movies in the genre. G20 tries very hard to work around many of these, and it’s very self-conscious when it can’t.
So back to the story, then. After some family tension at the White House, President Sutton’s tech-savvy daughter Serena (played by Marsai Martin) is grounded and has to come with the President, First Gentleman Derek (played by Anthony Anderson), and her nerdy brother Demetrius (played by Christopher Farrar) to Cape Town, where they will attend the G20 summit.
Meanwhile, Rutledge, along with his band of mercenaries, is quietly infiltrating the summit. Their goal: take all the leaders of the 20 richest nations hostage and create chaos in the world economy using deepfakes, crypto, and other assorted techno-babble.
After the plan is set in motion, G20 turns into a Die Hard-like siege film set at a Cape Town luxury hotel. The president, along with a handful of the other guests, including the slightly Boris Johnson-like British prime minister Oliver Everett (played by Douglas Hodge), make their escape through the hotel. Meanwhile, First Gentleman Derek Sutton has to escort their two teenage children to safety.
This all plays out much like you would expect from a film like this, even though it avoids cliches, caricature characters, and silly one-liners. Director Patricia Riggen (Dopesick, Little America, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan) creates a lot of tension here, even though the action scenes themselves aren’t very imaginative — realistic, for the most part, but not very creative. A lot of sneaking around, shooting terrorists in the back kind of things.
G20 does a lot of things right. The setup is quick and effective, and without being silly or over-the-top, it’s clear who the heroes and villains are. In this sense, it’s an old-fashioned siege thriller in the style of Die Hard and the “…Has Fallen” films with Gerard Butler.
The acting is good throughout. Viola Davis makes a convincing US president without falling into the over-the-top “Get off my plane!” sort of acting. She’s patriotic and family-oriented, without constantly needing to prove it, which makes the story more approachable for those of us in the rest of the world. We also learn about her background as a soldier, and while that helps explain her ease with combat and firefights, a few scenes stretch credibility, especially when she’s up against trained mercenaries.
Director Patricia Riggen also moves a lot of the focus to the interpersonal relationships, and she does it well. Caricatures are cast aside, humor is underplayed but effective, with the First Lady of South Korea Han Min-Seo (played by MeeWha Alana Lee) being a prime example in one or two scenes.
It doesn’t quite escape the expected cliches of the genre, though. There are one or two Secret Service sacrifices — “Look out, Madame President!” — and Antony Starr’s Rutledge (who for some reason reminded me a lot of the well-known YouTuber Johnny Harris) chews a lot of scenery in the second half of the film. And the British Prime Minister can’t help but comment something like “It’s almost like 007!” when he sees a collection of guns. And of course, President Sutton’s tech-savvy daughter helps out by hacking into something during the film.
That said, G20 is an enjoyable action-thriller that breaks many of the expected cliches of the genre, even if many might scoff at the concept of a female African American US president fighting international mercenaries in the time we live in.
Get over it. Everything doesn’t have to be political, right?
Leave the politics. Bring the popcorn!