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The Die Hard Clone. what can on say about this battled tested tried and true action film trope which has seen its fair share of American presidents taking up the mantle from Bruce Willis’ iconic and fun John McClane. We’ve had Hollywood icon Harrison Ford doing it probably the best with Aaron Eckhart doing a little damage as well in the Has Fallen films. Hell, even Jamie Foxx has served as an ass whooping leader of the free world and now it’s Academy Award winner Viola Davis’ turn. Davis has strutted her mean ass strut as the DCEU and now DCU’s Amanda Waller and now she gets to get downright down and dirty in Amazon MGM’s latest action offering G20 which sees the Oscar winner taking on The Boys’ Antony Starr.
In G20, Viola Davis portrays President Danielle Sutton, who is a former soldier that unfortunately ended up on numerous magazine covers for just simply doing the right thing and rescuing a helpless child in a war zone. That incident pretty much paved the way for Sutton to take on Washington D.C. and now she has her sights set on helping the people of Africa and the world beat world hunger. To do this, Sutton ventures to the G20 summit to hopefully get the rest of the world’s leaders in tow with her ambitious plan. Unfortunately for Sutton and the summit, former Australian special forces operative Rutledge (Starr) has his own agenda and he and his mercenary force overtake the summit to get ultra-rich while hiding behind a false play to help the world beat the richest countries and while all in all, stealing all of the fortune for themselves.
It’s familiar territory here and I see that the movie is being ripped apart by a lot of critics for that very reason but for action film fans, this one still delivers an enjoyable experience with Davis never going over the top in her performance on the dramatic and action side of things. Starr has the lowly job of being this clone’s Hans Gruber rip off but even though he never excels to the late, great Alan Rickman (seriously, no one ever will) he still throws it back to the heyday of action cinema with his performance and just like Davis, he never phones it in and keeps it somewhat grounded.
The rest of the cast is tailor made here with Anthony Anderson going against his usual comedic performances as Suttons’ First Man and here Anderson keeps it mostly serious and even gets to shine a little in some pretty savage action sequences while defending his children. Ramón Rodríguez, best known for movies like Battle: Los Angeles and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, gets to excel in a lot of the onscreen chaos as Sutton’s head of Secret Service Manny Ruiz and has a few gnarly kills to notch on his belt. I was quite pleasantly surprised that Ruiz was able to stick around for the thrills as normally this type of character goes down early in this type of fair. We also get a little cameo from the MCU’s Agent Coulson himself, Clark Gregg, as the Vice President but he mostly just watched things unfold from the communications room back in Washington while putting in an unmemorable performance.
In terms of the adrenaline and action design, G20 serves its purpose and gives us a few CQB battles including an elevator scuffle which happens to be one of my favorite types of sequences in action films and some shoot-outs throughout that satisfy but at the end of the day they are not very memorable. Davis plays Sutton as a former soldier who never really saw combat except for that one terrible instance and that gives the film a more realistic and grounded approach as she knows just enough to defend herself, but she never goes full on Mike Banning. There is one stand out altercation in the dark where Sutton gets to take down a slew of baddies with some well-placed bursts from her automatic weapon. We then have the obligatory matchup between Sutton and Rutledge which ends pretty much like one would imagine. I will say that there are a few savage and bloody moment with bladed weaponry which is always welcome, and I fell that the movie would have benefitted from more of that type of fighting onscreen.
The plot is ridiculous, but it does offer up a sign of the times with the use of technology including AI deepfakes and the dreaded crypto currency, but it is what it is, and this is the world we live in now. Call me old fashioned but I miss the days when a Gruber and his henchmen would take over a high rise for just simple bearer bonds. I’m a product of the old school way of doing things but I can accept what we have nowadays when it gives us what we want in terms of action and stunts and here we get just enough to satisfy on a Saturday night at home.
There is also the glaring use of CGI and for the most part it’s serviceable here and only really evident at the end when a Huey chopper is involved in the climactic battle. The violence and blood is mostly decent looking and you can tell this one had a decent budget with it being an Amazon MGM pic.
Overall, you know what you’re in for with G20 and its solid actors like Davis, Anderson and Starr that elevate the film above the more generic Die Hard clones. It’s generic and standard action fare with some tense and well put together action sequences and Davis makes for a likable leader that a voter would actually want top back. It’s a shame that our real and current presidential regime is such a horrific mess with a man that is a joke, and I think I enjoyed G20 more because it gave us a world where all the countries actually come together instead of tearing themselves apart. Movies are an escape and with that Davis and G20 serves its purpose and then some.
VERDICT: 3.5 Out of 5 Stars
Viola Davis and Antony Starr elevate an otherwise predictable and generic albeit enjoyable Die Hard clone with serviceable tension, action and violence and a president that’s actually worthy of being in office.
