'G20' delivers the Viola Davis goods
Imagining her as a hard-charging President for two hours is a delight.
Every screenplay created doesn’t need to be wholly original or deeply thought provoking. Just create something entertaining and satisfying for the masses, who don’t sit down each night after a hard day’s work to see something brilliant yet depressing. With no disrespect to the award-nominated The Brutalist, it won’t make you sleep well at night knowing how corrupt American businessmen took advantage, in more ways than one, surviving Hungarian Jews who somehow made it out of hell. Enter G20, a new movie streaming on Prime that aims to please and make the viewer smile.
Directed by Patricia Riggen and starring the ever-resourceful Viola Davis, this global takeover riff on Die Hard doesn’t reinvent the wheel or will go down as one of 2025’s greatest hits, but it takes the viewer down to the wire and throws them something worth talking about. A black President (Davis) who gathers the leaders around the world for their yearly meeting, and has a disgruntled soldier (Antony Starr) hijack it with a plan powered by greed and rage. Implementing newfound financial properties like Bitcoin and dangerous recreations such as deep fake facial recognition, the team of screenwriters does a good enough job of keeping young and old movie fans engaged here.
The screenplay has four sets of handprints on it, but the result is exciting enough thanks to the cast pushing it up to heights that other talent may not have been able to reach. Anthony Anderson makes a fine First Man and Douglas Hodge has a nice turn as a world leader thrust into action. Big credit, though, here to the “that guy” of the movie, Ramon Rodriguez. Playing the President’s most resilient Secret Service agent who knows how to handle himself under fire, it’s the kind of role that gives a small piece of the pie actor a chance to shine in a big movie.
Starr, most known to entertainment consumers as the lead in Banshee and The Boys, gets to chew some scenery as the Rutledge, the mercenary killer after big dollars and world domination. Thank you, filmmakers, for letting him use his deliciously cruel (at least here) New Zealand accent. A phony American tongue would have taken him down a peg or two in the viability department.
Make no mistake, though. This is the Viola show from start to finish. She’s good in every single movie or television show that casts her, but there’s a certain satisfaction seeing her play an Executive in Chief who shouldn’t be underestimated. She can handle herself in physical action settings, but every line of dialogue is given something more by her talent and gravitas. If Denzel Washington had a female comparison, Davis fits the mold. She is always a positive factor in a movie, and G20 rides to victory on that idea.
Prime Video is a good spot for the movie. Sure, a theatrical release would have been sweet action for this old school, star-driven feature, but it wouldn’t work in today’s cinema economy. With the state of the country as it is today, something quick and easy with a few nice surprises and action scenes will go down like smooth bourbon on the rocks.
Pour yourself something potent and cold, and settle in for a nice two-hour batch of escapism with G20.
