rewrite this title ‘G20’ Review: Viola Davis Plays an Action-Hero President

The action spectacle “G20” offers up an absurd fantasy: What if the president of the United States were a gunslinging, martial-arts hero? “Air Force One” (1997) may be the ur-text of this shamelessly jingoistic subgenre, but Viola Davis’s President Danielle Sutton raises the bar on sheer brawniness.

The script, in any case, aims for relevance. The bulk of the story takes place in a digitally-enhanced hillside hotel in Cape Town, where President Sutton and her family — including her doting husband, Derek (Anthony Anderson), teenage daughter, Serena (Marsai Martin), and son, Demetrius (Christopher Farrar) — have arrived for the Group of 20 economic summit.

Chaos ensues when Rutledge (Antony Starr), a jacked crypto-terrorist from Australia, infiltrates the hotel with a group of military-trained lackeys with extremist right-wing views. Rutledge and his crew take most of the attending world leaders hostage, forcing them to record videos of themselves that he uses to create deepfakes meant to cause global stock markets to plunge. This master plan hinges on discrediting Sutton — though as a female politician, she’s used to the scrutiny.

The film, directed by Patricia Riggen, clicks into place when Sutton and her top bodyguard Manny (Ramón Rodríguez) evade capture, navigating the hotel complex in search of her escape vehicle while knocking out Rutledge’s minions in cramped set pieces (like an elevator and a kitchen). Additional plot twists and cutesy comic touches come courtesy of the elderly South Korean first lady (MeeWha Alana Lee), the chauvinistic British Prime Minister (Douglas Hodge), and a top Italian delegate in high heels (Sabrina Impacciatore, who played the prickly hotel manager in the second season of “The White Lotus,” gets a fine spotlight moment during a missile-heavy getaway scene). This group latches onto Sutton for protection, while elsewhere Derek, Demetrius, and Serena play their own cat-and-mouse games.

Though Davis is best known for her Oscar-winning dramatic roles in films like “Fences,” she has also become a formidable action star (consider “Widows” and “The Woman King”). She manages to elevate this generic action film by the sheer steely force of her presence. The choppy editing style and lackluster cinematography don’t exactly do justice to her combat scenes, so it’s fortunate that Davis, even while standing still and clutching a weapon, conveys ferocity so effortlessly. The wobbly-eyed passion she brings to Sutton’s monologues, however, isn’t enough to dissolve the awkward tension between the film’s sincerity and stark ridiculousness — as in a teary confession about Sutton’s history of military service and the Time magazine cover photo that started her political career. In this fateful image, we see her bursting out of a flaming building with a child in her arms, but the cheap, sloppily altered look of it makes it play for laughs.

Intentions aside, “G20” plays well as a silly action movie. I certainly cackled throughout, making it easy to shrug off the incoherence of the conspiracy plot and the obligatory supermom additions. Though the film was completed well before the current administration took office, there’s something itchy about needing to disentangle the realities of last year’s elections from the idea of an estimable Black woman as our president. To its credit, you forget these connections halfway through — to suspend that kind of disbelief takes some serious distractions.

G20Rated R for multiple killings, armed combat, and a violent hostage situation. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. Watch on Prime Video.