G20 review: President Viola Davis goes Rambo against Antony Starr's crypto bro terrorist

Thankfully, she never wears the heels.

Viola Davis stars as President Danielle Sutton, new to the Oval Office and about to attend her first G20 summit, held this year in South Africa. Unbeknownst to her, a team of terrorists is concocting an elaborate scheme to mass-kidnap the world’s leaders. (I won’t get into the specifics of their motivation, but it has something to do with cryptocurrency. The very first scene of this movie includes a baddie babbling about “the blockchain,” which was enough shorthand to know this was gobbledygook.) 

However! These same day-trading villains seem to have forgotten that President Sutton is a decorated war hero, and despite an injured knee, she still does mixed martial arts training with her ex-jarhead bodyman Manny (Ramón Rodriguez). We see early on that she can more than hold her own. But before she can fully embrace her inner Jason Bourne, there’s trouble in her own (White) house.

President Sutton and the First Gentleman (an excellently cast Anthony Anderson, quite a ways away from another great antipodean adventure, Kangaroo Jack) have a computer whiz daughter whose hacking skillz outwit the secret service, leading her to appear in politically embarrassing videos at a Georgetown bar. So it’s decided that she (Marsai Martin) and her younger, dorkier brother (Christopher Farrar) will fly to Cape Town with their parents but stay in their hotel room and out of trouble. Of course, trouble comes to them.

Viola Davis is a besieged U.S. president in 'G20' trailer

Scorpion crawled into bed and stung 'Will Trent' star Ramon Rodriguez

President Sutton’s politics are pretty vague — an angry Senator who opposes her is listed as an independent — but she does hope to initiate a program to eliminate world hunger. (Ah, a bleeding heart lib!) But she wants to do it by encouraging businesses (an old school conservative?) to utilize bleeding edge crypto technology. (Oh, so a disruptor?) I mention this just to applaud G20’s four credited screenwriters, which includes director Patricia Riggen, for threading the needle and keeping this movie impervious to any culture war talking points. If there was a political point of view to Air Force One, I certainly don’t remember it, other than Harrison Ford wanting Gary Oldman to get off his plane. 

That said, Viola Davis is a Black woman, and when scolding her daughter, she reminds her that she’s had to work twice as hard to get where she is. What’s more, she ignores the suggestions of her (fabulous) personal stylist. Yes, she’ll wear the bold red dress to the banquet, but her matching shoes will be sneakers. 

The right footwear soon becomes important when the Top Baddie (Antony Starr) initiates the attack. He is part of a third-party security team with moles inside the U.S. government. Starr, best known as Homelander on The Boys, starts out as just a typical (though very hunky) monster, but as his plan goes awry he really sinks into some entertaining (and deliberate) histrionics. Lines like “fire the missiles; that’s what they are there for!” are well served by his delivery.

The reason for his anger, of course, is President Dutton, who, with Manny, manages to escape the initial invasion. She darts through a back exit, bringing with her the zany Italian head of the IMF (White Lotus star Sabrina Impacciatore), a short woman who defiantly throws off her own heels in one of the movie’s best moments; the kindly South Korean First Lady (MeeWha Alana Lee), who is “a humanitarian and not a banker,” and therefore our stand-in when everyone starts talking about deflated markets; and the pompous British Prime Minister (Douglas Hodge), who may as well have a crumpet in his hand and a monocle perpetually falling in his soup the whole time. 

These caricatures are amusing, but nothing compared to when President Dutton finally has to strap up and blow away mercenaries like Rambo. One level’s boss fight includes an enormous beast of a man double her size with a Slavic accent, but is he any match for American Exceptionalism?!? Heck no!

And while this is happening, the First Children get their hands on a laptop and, uh, hack their way past the dampened communications system being run by an enormously funded team of professional security agents. The kids are always on their devices!

G20 is a movie that is so far-fetched that only a true stick in the mud would complain about its lack of realism. (For starters, the markets would freeze if 20 world leaders were kidnapped, just to avoid the economic turmoil that our crypto jerks want.) But if you do not find yourself hootin’ and hollerin’ at Viola Davis — excuse me, President Viola Davis — packing automatic weapons, tossing grenades, and charging into a helicopter, well, your loyalty to good, idiotic fun might be questioned. Grade: B