'G20' Review: Viola Davis Has Entered Her Gerard Butler Era

In G20, Viola Davis stars as President Danielle Sutton, a military hero who rode a wave of patriotic pride — the good ol’ Independence Day kind, not the January 6 kind — all the way to the White House. Her biggest scandal is that she’s having trouble reining in her rebellious teenage daughter Serena (Marsai Martin), and things on the national homefront are apparently calm enough that her primary agenda for the upcoming G20 summit is getting other world leaders to sign onto her ambitious new plan to use digital currency and online banking to help struggling farmers in Africa. I would try to explain this plan better, but the more details I give, the more confusing it would be. This is not the kind of movie built to be judged or discussed on the level of plot or theme or “artistic” choices. No diving in the shallow end; we would only hurt ourselves.

In any case, not too long after Sutton arrives in Cape Town, South Africa, the top-of-the-line hotel hosting the G20 summit is subject to a hostile takeover masterminded by a mercenary turned crypto-terrorist named Rutledge (Antony Starr, aka Homelander). He’s going to hold all the world leaders hostage until the citizens of the world follow his instructions and take their savings out of all traditional banking institutions and invest everything in crypto. It’s up to Sutton and her main SS detail, Manny Ruiz (Ramón Rodríguez) to fight their way out and stop him before the entire global economy is destabilized.

AI and deepfakes are thrown into the mix as well, because this is a film that’s trying really hard to be timely. Always a losing proposition in the movie business, where a quick turnaround is a couple years while pop culture and news cycles move along in mere weeks, but G20 is a rare example where the result of this losing battle is not merely a film that feels dated, but one that feels like it was genuinely made for an alternate universe.

G20 was greenlit for Kamala Harris’s America to a degree that is by turns fascinating, unintentionally hilarious, and downright depressing. It’s a failed bet on not just Kamala’s victory, but the assumption that she would be ushering in, as far as pop culture is concerned, the Obama years 2.0, those happy days when Olympus Has Fallen raked in so much money Hollywood decided it was worth expanding into a whole franchise. There are winks and nods about women in power and progress and a cringe-worthy joke about Wakanda. Sutton is Kamala by way of Nick Fury; just in case there might be any room for doubt, Clark Gregg plays VP Harold Moseley and she has a Hillary Clinton-coded best frenemy in Treasury Secretary Joanna Worth (Elizabeth Marvel) to drive home the point. This is a movie that tried to anticipate the future, and it is very clear that nobody involved anticipated a world where Rutledge’s convoluted crypto conspiracy somehow makes more sense than the actual forces threatening to destabilize the global economy, which is at once tragic and hysterical. How is reality dumber than this dumb movie?

Long story short: is G20 good? Not really. Is it fun? Kinda-sorta-sometimes, in a plane movie, no thoughts, head empty, smooth brain way. It would certainly be more fun if it were the 90 minute movie it clearly wants to be, instead of running closer to two hours.

But what is most compelling about G20 by far is Viola Davis as action hero. We’ve seen her kick but and take names before, but at this point, after films Widows and The Woman King, it’s really starting to feel less like a phase and more like a way of life. And honestly? I’m seated. Butler and Neeson and Statham deserve a little healthy competition.

G20 is now streaming on Amazon Prime.