Director: Patricia Riggen
Writer: Caitlin Parrish, Erica Weiss, Logan Miller, Noah Miller
Stars: Viola Davis, Anthony Anderson, Antony Starr
Synopsis: Terrorists take over the G20 summit with President Sutton, bringing her governing and military experience to defend her family, company, and the world.
There’s no denying that Prime Video’s G20 sounds like the fakest movie in existence, especially when one watches the opening scene. Within the first two minutes introducing us to its antagonist, Corporal Rutledge (Antony Starr), the words “crypto,” “blockchain,” and “bitcoin” are mentioned without an innate understanding of what cryptocurrencies are. It’s as if the screenwriting team, comprised of four writers, heard those words in passing and decided to make an entire political thriller based on a terrorist who would want to enrich himself in bitcoin when the global economy collapses.
To be fair, G20 can now be considered a documentary, because the global economy did collapse in real life just a few days ago, and the current President is very much a fan of cryptocurrency. That said, I couldn’t explain, for the life of me, how Rutledge can actually accomplish the collapse of the world economy to enrich himself via unstable currencies, especially when “AI” and “deepfake,” more buzzwords blended in the script, are thrown in the mix. Essentially, the villain wants to hijack the G20 summit set in Cape Town, South Africa, to make all world leaders read a pangram, a sentence that uses every letter of the alphabet at least once, to program their AI software to generate deepfake videos of these leaders explaining how their ill-defined treaty will enrich themselves, thus crashing the dollar, and boosting bitcoin?
What the terrorists didn’t expect, though, was that the U.S. President, is not only a military veteran, but kicks major ass. This is Danielle Sutton, played by Viola Davis, who has now become the world’s last hope at saving the leaders held hostage by Rutledge, and bringing back the global economy to what it once was. It’s as politically muddled and profoundly misguided in its understanding of current economic and geopolitical trends as any good Cannon Group movie (think Invasion U.S.A. or Assassination), but it’s also what makes G20 surprisingly fun.
I still wouldn’t call the movie good, by any means. Within the first 20 minutes, you’ll be able to pinpoint exactly who in the President’s team is in on it and works hand-in-hand with Rutledge in ensuring Sutton’s term will prematurely end, and you’ll also be able to guess how POTUS will foil the villain plot, with the help of her rebel daughter, of course. Why is that? Because in the opening scene, a parallel bait-and-switch, her daughter, Serena (Marsai Martin), is able to foil the Secret Service and party at a bar without a security detail with her. That will absolutely come in handy when Rutledge’s team hacks the keycards given to the attendees of the G20 summit.
Obviously, there are frictions with Sutton and her daughter, because Serena thinks her mother doesn’t allow her to do what she wants, which, duh, she’s the President! You would think that Serena would at least understand that the daughter of the most powerful individual in the world travelling with a security detail isn’t stopping her from living her life, but it does cause a divide in the family, notably in how she thinks their parents are controlling her, when Danielle believes it to be the exact opposite. Because a video involving her leaked online, sparking controversy at the President’s ability to lead the country when she can’t keep her daughter in check, she decides to take her entire family to the G20 summit, including First Gentlemen Derek (Anthony Anderson), and son Demetrius (Christopher Farrar).
We do know that their narrative arc will be emotionally resolved once they’re stuck in a life-or-death situation and can also predict who, in the broader White House security team, will sacrifice their lives and take a bullet for the President as soon as one specific character is introduced. For the ones who will want to see this movie, I won’t reveal it, but let’s just say director Patricia Riggen and her screenwriting team are absolutely not doing the movie any favors by making it the most predictable in existence. Every story, character, and thematic beat is seen a thousand miles away, even when Riggen attempts to fool us by including many contrived moments, and several fakeouts during an action scene. We can see right through them, and realize exactly where this entire script is going even an hour before the movie wraps up in a conclusion that absolutely recalls Invasion U.S.A. Once the villain is defeated, the movie abruptly cuts to credits. Incredible.
And yet, with all of these telegraphed arcs and screenwriting platitudes, the movie still manages to contain enough B-movie thrills to keep us invested. For a direct-to-streaming offering, the action is surprisingly kinetic and exciting, which is even wilder considering this comes from the director of Miracles from Heaven and, her most known effort, Lemonade Mouth. There’s intent behind some of the quick cuts (we can actually see the fight movements clearly), Checco Varese’s cinematography is surprisingly sweeping and playful, whilst the setpieces themselves bring about some well-dosed adrenaline to our seats. One in particular, set in a kitchen, rules incredibly hard. I never expected such a movie to contain this much well-mounted hard-R action, but if there’s any actor who deserves such a vehicle to at least nail that department, it’s undoubtedly Viola Davis.
We already knew the Oscar-winning actress kicks ass, especially if one saw Gina Prince-Bythewood’s incredible The Woman King. It’s no surprise that she does exactly the same in G20, though bringing a surprising amount of emotional heft to her portrayal of the President, given relatively flimsy material to work with.
The best parts of her performance aren’t exactly the most crowd-pleasing moments, where she delivers scene-chewing one-liners such as, “I was elected…coward!” Rather, the most memorable parts of her turn are when the movie reaches surprisingly heartfelt territory, either in her relationship with her family, or in how she teams up with U.K. Prime Minister Oliver Everett (Douglas Hodge), Elena Romano (Sabrina Impacciatore), South Korean First Lady Han Min-Seo (MeeWha Alana Lee), and agent Manny Ruiz (Ramón Rodríguez).
Each aforementioned character has their time in the spotlight and gets at least one satisfying moment. One can think about the U.K. Prime Minister and Elena driving “The Beast” while attempting to evade missiles – it’s one of the biggest highlights of the picture. Antony Starr is also unsurprisingly great as the antagonist, though it is not as nuanced of a character as Homelander is in The Boys. That, of course, isn’t his fault, but the screenplay’s. A-list actors stuck in a B-movie, but all of them are embracing this inextricable fact and fully know they are not in this to win Oscars or instill some perennity as a future classic.
And that’s exactly why the movie gets the job done. Again, it’s not anything to write home about, but it’s far from being the worst of the year, especially on Prime Video, where Tyler Perry’s Duplicity released not long ago and is the contender to beat for the most appalling film of 2025. As a disposable, ultra-generic action movie, G20 is one of the most serviceable streaming offerings you can watch. It has enough excitement to sustain your attention for its 110-minute runtime, though you likely won’t remember it by the time you wake up the following morning. It’s nothing more than a mere distraction watch after a long day at work. For many moviegoers, that’s exactly what they’re looking for.
