G20 (2025)
Directed by: Patricia Riggen
Premise: Terrorists invade the G20 summit and take world leaders hostage. The President of the United States (Viola Davis) attempts to thwart the terrorists.
What Works: G20 is a straightforward actioner in the tradition of Die Hard and Air Force One. Movies like this are about reluctant heroes who fight terrorists and rescue hostages, usually in a defined space. The filmmakers of G20 understand the kind of movie they are making and the picture aligns with the general template and appeals of this specific action subgenre. The President of the United States is also the mother of two children, one of them an unruly teenage daughter (Marsai Martin), and that quality humanizes the heroine.
What Doesn’t: Everything about G20 is underwhelming, starting with the action. The set pieces are the reason audiences watch these kinds of films but there is little showmanship or kinetic thrills to be found. It’s competent but flat. G20 has fights and shootouts but nothing in the movie is especially exciting. The whole film feels slack and that’s partly due to the lack of urgency or a goal. Once the terrorists take over the hotel, there is no obvious direction for the heroes to move toward and the film feels stuck in a narrative rut. There is no sense of rising action or escalating stakes. The lack of drama is evident in the performances. Viola Davis appears visibly bored through much of the movie. Anthony Starr plays the chief terrorist and he’s a cliché mustache twirling villain. Setting this Die Hard premise at the G20 summit has potential. It could set off an international incident as tensions between nations come to a head and an early scene acknowledges world hunger and economic inequality. All that is shoved aside. The terrorists have taken these world leaders hostage to enact a scam to crash the world economy and transition national wealth to cryptocurrency. Ludicrous does not even begin to describe the stupidity of this conceit. The terrorists have taken these world leaders hostage to create deepfake videos of them making false confessions as though this weren’t already possible with available software. It’s lazy storytelling, as though the filmmakers just ripped off headlines without understanding anything about economics, technology, or government. The fact that everything goes back to normal in the end reveals the flimsiness of the premise.
Disc extras: Available on Amazon Prime.
Bottom Line: G20 is a generic Die Hard knock off. The movie is just not engaging or exciting and it squanders a potentially interesting premise on a really stupid story.
Episode: #1046 (May 4, 2025)