In G20, Viola Davis Plays a Butt-Kicking President You Can Rely On

The only thing that stretches credulity more than a woman president who picks up an automatic weapon to blast a gang of baddies at a global economic summit is the idea of a woman president, period. That’s the ironic and sad truth of Patricia Riggen’s action thriller G20, in which Viola Davis plays a war hero who has become president of the United States, with all the risks and responsibilities the position entails. Someday we really will have a Black woman president, or at least a return to intelligent, sensible leadership. Until that happens, we’ll have to make do with the wish-fulfilment fantasy of G20, a movie that does little more than tick off a selection of action-movie boxes—though some of them are at least ticked off with a satisfying click.

G20 opens with a scene in which a young woman valiantly does her best to protect a digital thingamob of great importance; she fails. The next thing we know, the president, Davis’s Danielle Sutton, is being roused from her bed to deal with a domestic crisis. Her 17-year-old daughter, Serena (Marsai Martin), has managed to sneak out of the White House to go clubbing, somehow eluding the gimlet eye of the Secret Service. Serena is a tech whiz; she also has a brother, Demetrius (Christopher Farrarr), who’s very sweet but seems to have no discernible talents—this is a movie where the women are the ones who shine, although First Gentleman Derek Sutton (Anthony Anderson) does have a moment where he blams a baddie who threatens to harm his family—but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

After the press learns of Serena’s fairly harmless teenage breakout, a journalist mockingly asks Danielle how citizens can expect her to protect them when she can’t keep track of her own family. That’s when she decides Serena and Demetrius should accompany her and Derek on their trip to Cape Town, South Africa, for the G20 summit. The kids protest, but in the end, they have no choice. And so, when a group of crypto terrorists—led by the disgruntled bitcoin nut Rutledge (Antony Starr)—infiltrate the ultra-fancy hotel where the event is being held and take a bunch of world leaders hostage (after killing some, just for good measure), Danielle’s kids and husband are endangered, too. She’s equally loyal to her family and to her country. In a crisis, how can she possibly prioritize?

Davis is one of our greatest actresses, and she’s very good at playing an individual forced to make urgent life-and-death decisions. Give her a lofty speech—she gets several here—and she’s right at home, lending Shakespearean-level gravitas to every phrase and syllable. But she’s rarely called on to show any wit, and G20 is a movie sorely in need of some. Written by Caitlin Parrish, Erica Weiss, and Logan Miller, the script radiates hushed reverence for the mere idea of a Black woman president; couldn’t G20 be just a little less self-serious? When Danielle scolds Serena for sneaking out, she asks her daughter, “You know I needed to work twice as hard to get here. Why are you making it harder?” We know exactly what she means, and where she’s coming from. But even though G20 presents itself as a fun, throwaway action movie, it’s far too ponderous for its own good. Davis makes it clear that Danielle is giving her all to save democracy and her family; she’s just not having any fun doing it.

Still, there’s pleasure to be had in watching Davis’s Danielle tear off the bottom half of her elegant scarlet G20 reception gown, to make running, climbing, and dangling precariously from helicopters that much easier. (A wartime knee injury still gives her trouble, so before the evening’s events have even begun, she’s swapped out the red stilettos her stylist has forced upon her for a pair of comfy sneakers, also red. Yet another priority Danielle has got straight.) Along with her charming, protective right-hand special agent Manny (Ramón Rodríguez), Danielle must lead a Poseidon Adventure-style crew of misfit survivors to safety. They include the Korean prime minister’s wife (MeeWha Alana Lee), who looks like a dignified granny in a hanbok but turns out to have nerves of steel; the whiny, highly annoying British prime minister (Douglas Hodge); and the head of the IMF, an intimidating powerhouse in a velvet pantsuit and standing-tall platform sandals (Sabrina Impacciatore). But everyone in this group—even, eventually, that irritating British prime minister—learns they can rely on Danielle, and she doesn’t let them down. Davis can do anything: she handles an automatic weapon as well as Schwarzenegger ever did; she works some killer martial arts moves; and in one of her most glorious moments, she cracks a bad guy over the head with a frying pan. That’s when you realize what a shame it is that G20—which is available to stream on Prime Video—isn’t playing in theaters. To watch Davis whack that goon is deeply cathartic, but it would be even more galvanizing to share it with an audience. United we stand, divided we fall. Maybe that goes for the way we watch movies, too.