“I’ve got two dead world leaders here, and there will be more the longer you make me wait for you.”
G20 follows President Danielle Sutton while she attends the yearly G20 Summit, championing a new policy proposal giving sub-Saharan farmers access to digital currency. Unfortunately, a group of terrorists who oppose the policy infiltrate her security team and hold all the leaders hostage. Running for her life, Sutton must rescue her family before it’s too late and save America, and the world … I think.
This movie left me speechless, and not in a good way. I was literally pacing around my house wondering how the heck I was going to talk about this movie because it’s such a mess. So what the hell, full spoilers below!
Personally, I found it hard to buy into the initial takeover. A group of about fifty guys with guns easily captured all of the world’s leaders because America doesn’t have a military base in South Africa. All the other countries have no security or are completely useless. Granted, I live in the D.C. area so I read more about this stuff than the average movie viewer, but this still seems lazy. Show us the well-thought-out plan and hijinks! Terrorists taking control within seconds is boring and not fun to watch.
The terrorist’s plot is so hair-brained and disconnected from reality that I’m not sure any viewers will be able to suspend their disbelief. In order to “make” all of the world’s citizens invest solely in crypto, the terrorist group creates deepfake videos of all the leaders saying heinous and corrupt things about economics and currency. Something something everyone will believe because it’s online something something. All the world leaders agree to this, and the ones that don’t get killed. He needs Sutton though, because America.
I like many of the cast members of G20 in other projects, so I was hoping for some fun performances from them, but alas. Everyone here showed up for a paycheck and is giving the bare minimum even in the more dramatic scenes. None of the character writing is more than skin-deep anyway, so I’m not sure what more they could have done even if this was a project they cared about.
I wish I could say that this movie at least does the action scenes well, but it doesn’t. They’re all hacked to ribbons to hide the lack of choreography and rely on a complete lack of audience engagement to stay interesting. I lost my damn mind watching the scene where Sabrina Impacciatore’s character tries to choke one of the terrorists by looping a piece of fabric around his neck. The camera awkwardly lingers as the fabric is unwieldy, and flops first around the terrorist’s nose then chin as he stays stationary, waiting to be choked for the plot’s sake. I hope that this paints a picture for you of the kind of movie we’re dealing with.
I think this movie could have worked better with even a hint of self-awareness, but it’s played painfully straight. Character lines trying to inject levity fall flat immediately due to the serious and sullen tone of the entire story, played with dramatic swells of music and a mood of “this could really happen.” With a more playful tone, the action scenes which already land as silly would fit in well and Viola Davis’ deadpan is incredibly effective in comedic moments.
This movie could have been fun on paper, but it’s just too convoluted. It presents a lot of ideas but never digs deeper, and the moments it spends more time with end up making no sense. I’ve seen worse movies, but this is up there.
