22 hours Ago By Mid-day
Cast: Viola Davis, Anthony Anderson, Ramón Rodríguez, Marsai Martin, Antony Starr, Douglas Hodge, Elizabeth Marvel, Christopher FarrarDirector: Patricia RiggenRating: 2.5/5Runtime: 108 min.This film might have made merry if Kamala Harris was voted President of USA but unfortunately the outcome was different.
So the theme of a Black female President defending her family and the world from terrorists at a G20 summit feels like a let down.Viola Davis is President Danielle Sutton, a former Iraq war hero turned politician attending the G20 summit, whose hopes of making America great again are dashed when mercenaries led by Corporal Rutledge (Antony Starr) hijack the event.Director Patricia Riggen’s film feels like a rehash of the “Has Fallen” franchise - only exception being that the female President is not all talk and diplomacy but is also ready to get down and dirty as an action hero.
There’s much more to the story though. Serena (Marsai Martin) the tech-savvy teenage daughter of Sutton and her husband, Derek (Anthony Anderson) is apprehended by the Secret Service for drinking at a bar, an incident that causes her mother headaches in the press even as she tries to sell her idea for fixing global hunger by providing poor farmers in Africa with digital currency. The G20 summit in Cape Town, South Africa, is the platform from which she hopes her plan will take off.
Rutledge(Antony Starr), a former U.S. army officer, who has infiltrated the security team meant to protect the event, takes the gathered politicians and their spouses hostage.
But quick thinking Secret Service Agent Manny Ruiz (Ramón Rodríguez) manages to direct Sutton, British Prime Minister Oliver Everett (Douglas Hodge), and a few others to an escape.The film’s fears of cryptocurrency, deep fake AI, and global economic volatility are contemporary and timely. “G20” is an issues-based film providing Davis with opportunity to vocally express the politics of the film and proactively participate in exhilarating sequences.
Davis has the steel required to be an action hero and the set pieces here do her justice. Joseph Trapanese’s score, provides some added tension.The film doesn’t concentrate so much on the social and political pressures faced by a Black woman ascending the highest office as it does on the explosive global crisis she is expected to get herself out of.
Nevertheless this film is an entertaining and gripping action vehicle and has serviceable tension to see it through..
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