Making a great action movie is, in my opinion, the toughest accomplishment in all of film. A filmmaker has to achieve a perfect balance between the pure entertainment quality of the film, in terms of plot, action choreography, etc., while also maintaining a powerful emotional undertone that helps viewers stay tethered to a story that, for the most part, is completely unrealistic.
Films like “The Fast and the Furious,” “Gladiator,” and “Léon: The Professional” are all bona fide classics of the genre because they all center around human connection and transcendent bonds. They also included some of the best action sequences ever, and have some of the most entertaining stories in cinema history. Due to the difficulty of obtaining this balance, most action films rely heavily on the action. While they fulfill the need for entertainment, they tend to lack the emotional depth that keeps viewers connected.
But every now and then, a film like “G20” will come out and surprise me because somehow it is so bad that it miraculously fails at providing both entertainment and emotion.
“G20” tells the story of the G20 summit in South Africa, which is thrown into chaos after a militant organization seizes control of the event and takes multiple major world leaders as hostages. However, the President of the United States (Viola Davis), who has extensive military experience, evades capture and starts carrying out a plan to make it out and get help.
As the film progresses, the militant organization reveals that their plan is to make deepfakes of the various leaders and publicly release manufactured footage of conversations about a global plan to control citizens through currency. The head of this organization, Rutledge (Antony Starr), aims to convince the global population through these deepfakes to pull their money out of the markets and invest it in cryptocurrency so his Bitcoin position skyrockets (yeah, you read it right) and the global working class exits the clutches of the elite, taking back control through digital currency.
Man, this movie sucks.
I think the most important things to discuss here are the words “deepfake,” “crypto,” and “Bitcoin.” Every time any of these words were used in the movie (way too many times to count), I actually wanted to gouge my eyes out because of how much secondhand embarrassment I was experiencing. What a terrible script.
The film quite literally opened with a scene in which the terrorists are chasing down some random woman who is never shown again to recover a “Bitcoin wallet” that she stole from them. Just five minutes in, I could already envision myself destroying this terrible excuse for a film in this exact review.
If I had to say some good things about it, I would focus primarily on the cast. Viola Davis gave a pretty good performance, which is standard for her, and I thought Anthony Anderson did an incredible job as the strong but subtle First Gentleman.
Another thing to discuss would be the action choreography. I’ll admit, as much as I hated the movie, there were some cool fight scenes. But for the most part, even the action was uninspired, boring, and recycled, making the whole film feel that way as well.
Film studios, can we please not make stupid movies about cryptocurrency and deepfakes — I might have to quit watching movies if this catches on.
Overall, “G20” was the most disappointing movie I’ve watched all year because, although I understand everyone wants to make money, I never thought I would see Viola Davis — a legend of the art — produce and star in a film that was so obviously a cash grab.
I hated this movie and if you have a couple hours to spare, I would recommend doing literally anything other than watch this monstrosity and validate its horrific existence.
Reach writer Paarth Gupta at arts@dailyuw.com. X: @pg_litty
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