Viola Davis is better known for her soul-searching performances in The Help and Fences than for her "ass-kicking action roles", said Ed Potton in The Times. But she plays the "swashbuckling American president" in this "preposterous romp" with real gusto. The film, currently screening on Prime Video, imagines a G20 summit in Cape Town, at which the world leaders gathered for the occasion are taken hostage by an Australian terrorist mastermind (Antony Starr), who plans to crash the world economy so that he can make a fortune from crypto. Alas for him, he didn't count on Davis's war-hero president, Danielle Sutton, who along with other dignitaries (including Douglas Hodge's buffoonish British prime minister) escapes to foil his plot. It's "ludicrous" and "unburdened by narrative logic", but great fun nonetheless: where else would you see the head of the IMF throttle someone in a lift, or a scene in which the "South Korean president has his ear chopped off"?
Davis is a credible action hero, said Peter Debruge in Variety. She comfortably inhabits a role of the sort that Stallone and Schwarzenegger would once have played, machine-gunning her way down corridors and, at one point, slaying half-a-dozen henchmen in quick succession. Yet while the movie "doesn't need to be realistic or even remotely plausible", it works at a "shockingly low intelligence level" and suffers from a truly dreadful script. It feels like "a parody of itself". The editing and cinematography aren't up to much either, said Beatrice Loayza in The New York Times, but ultimately, it doesn't matter. For all its faults, G20 "plays well as a silly action movie".
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Political cartoons for October 25Cartoons Saturday’s political cartoons include hospital bill trauma, Independence Day, and more
-
Roasted squash and apple soup recipeThe Week Recommends Autumnal soup is full of warming and hearty flavours
-
Ukraine: Donald Trump pivots againIn the Spotlight US president apparently warned Volodymyr Zelenskyy to accept Vladimir Putin’s terms or face destruction during fractious face-to-face
-
Roasted squash and apple soup recipe
The Week Recommends Autumnal soup is full of warming and hearty flavours
-
6 well-crafted log homesFeature Featuring a floor-to-ceiling rock fireplace in Montana and a Tulikivi stove in New York
-
Film reviews: A House of Dynamite, After the Hunt, and It Was Just an AccidentFeature A nuclear missile bears down on a U.S. city, a sexual misconduct allegation rocks an elite university campus, and a victim of government terror pursues vengeance
-
Book reviews: ‘Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife’ and ‘Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong With Baseball and How to Fix It’Feature Gertrude Stein’s untold story and Jane Leavy’s playbook on how to save baseball
-
Rachel Ruysch: Nature Into ArtFeature Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, through Dec. 7
-
Music reviews: Olivia Dean, Madi Diaz, and Hannah FrancesFeature “The Art of Loving,” “Fatal Optimist,” and “Nested in Tangles”
-
Gilbert King’s 6 favorite books about the search for justiceFeature The journalist recommends works by Bryan Stevenson, David Grann, and more
-
Ready for the apocalypseFeature As anxiety rises about the state of the world, the ranks of preppers are growing—and changing.
