G20 (2025)
Did we ever think we’d see the day when America (or Canda) would have a black female running the show? While we didn’t quite get there with former Vice President Kamala Harris, we can celebrate that in the fictionalized world of Hollywood this long overdue moment of equal opportunity for equal accomplishment, experience, and general badass-ness (yes, that’s a word!) has arrived. Enter G20 (2025), the action-thriller from producer, star, and Oscar-winner Viola Davis. Directed by Patricia Riggen and co-produced by co-stars Anthony Anderson (of Black-ish [2014-22] fame) and Ramón Rodríguez (of Will Trent [2023- ]) the film follows Davis’s American President Danielle Sutton as she travels to a G20 summit in South Africa.
But amongst her typical presidential entourage is her former presidential campaign adversary and now trusted friend and confidant (or is she?) Treasury Secretary Janna Worth (Elizabeth Marvel) and Rodríguez’s Secret Service Agent, Manny Ruiz. Oh, her family including Anderson’s loving husband Derek Sutton and two teenagers Demetrius (Christopher Farrar) and Serena (Marsai Martin, also of Black-ish) are also along for the ride. But it is clear that the kids’ inclusion is unusual and necessitated because the headstrong “almost 18” Serena has just caused a PR scandal after ditching her secret service detail and being caught drinking and partying underage. The typical (for normal teenagers), but scandalous (for a black president’s daughter) behaviour is now all-over social media and it is clear that Serena does not understand or care how the negative media coverage might disrupt her own life aspirations down the road or her mother’s urgent presidential work in the here and now.
Most of the film takes place on the ground at a palatial, cliff top resort in South Africa where the world leaders of the richest nations have gathered to discuss global affairs, including President Sutton’s proposal for a new policy called the “Together Plan” which would combat world hunger using cryptocurrency. Let the schmoozing begin! Sutton must convince allies and adversaries alike like the whiny and disdainful white British Prime Minister Oliver Everett (Douglas Hodge) and the aloof Head of the International Monetary Fund, Elena Romano (Sabrina Impacciatore), that her plan is worth backing. President Sutton is stunning in a red designer, floor length gown with a “superhero” cape and she is astute enough to forgo the glamourous but tortuous heels in lieu of a pair of red running shoes. This costume alteration is important for the chaos that soon ensues.
You see, despite their better judgement, Sutton’s government has signed off on additional contract security at the summit. But that security team has been infiltrated by disgruntled ex-military man Rutledge (Anthony Starr) who uses the opportunity to take the worlds’ leaders hostage and force them to participate in the creation of fraudulent AI videos that make it seem as if they are conspiring to impoverish the populations of their nations. The result is that the markets start to tank, and Rutledge and his buddies’ crypto alternative is instantly enriched to the tune of billions of dollars. (Uh, does any of this sound slightly familiar?).
Rutledge is diabolic, extremely violent, and unafraid to murder as a tool to terrorize his hostages. Sutton’s escape from the initial insurgence is due to her own quick thinking and that of her security detail Ruiz. So, separated from her husband and children, from her political team, and from the majority of the cowering G20 leaders, we witness the haphazard team of Sutton, Ruiz, Everett, Romano, and the South Korean First Lady Han Min-Seo (MeeWha Alana Lee) embark upon the unlikely task of trying to save themselves and the others from almost certain death.
Some of the moments of levity come from the ways that Sutton puts the disdainful Everett in his place, not with talk, but with action. You see, Sutton’s rise to the top of American politics came on the heels of her military service through which she saved a small child in a heroic feat that was memorialized in a compelling photograph which depicted her as a war hero. We say depicted because she is clearly conflicted about the image and the ways that her political staffers sought to use it in her successful election campaign. Although she is indeed a war hero, the brevity of her service has made her doubt it and the fear she felt under fire made her question her obvious bravery. This bravery is on clear display when she drops down into an elevator from the compartment above in which she and her unlikely entourage had been hiding (and alongside Ruiz) manages to subdue and kill the three armed men who were tasked with hunting and returning them to the gathering. Moments before, there is a brilliant scene when she poignantly rips away the lower half of her gown to facilitate the mobility that is necessary for her to outrun, outfight, and out manoeuvre the killers.
The film follows Sutton and her entourage, but also her husband and two kids who are trapped in another part of the complex. We are given insight into Sutton’s character when she repeatedly refuses to exit the summit without her family and other hostages. In one scenario she insists that she and Ruiz free the South African hotel staff who have been tied up in the kitchen by two white male mercenaries. In the action, Sutton slides a knife to Melokuhle (Theo Bongani Ndyalvane) who frees the other hostages and assists Sutton and her team. Intriguingly, when Sutton witnesses Melokuhle’s and his female colleague Lesedi’s (Noxolo Diamini) sense of calm focus under pressure, she ascertains that they are clearly not normal hotel staff. She would be right! They are South African agents planted at the summit for additional security and the backup is welcome.
As Melokuhle and Lesedi set off to find and assist Sutton’s family, Sutton is eventually lured back to the gathering when her husband is captured with the other world leaders. Although shot and bleeding badly, Ruiz, the ever-faithful agent, refuses to exit the summit without the president he is sworn to protect. Instead, he urges Everett and Romano to flee to safety and goes back to assist Sutton with the tech needed to outsmart the baddies. Serena (and Demetrius) who are on the run, also assist.
Everything culminates in spectacular fashion with a confrontation in the gathering space and on the rooftop where a helicopter waits to whisk Rutledge to safety with his stolen billions. Powerfully, there are several people who team up to bring Rutledge to justice including the demure Min-Seo, Sutton, Serena, and the American special forces reinforcements who finally breach the complex to assist. But there are points – especially at the end of the film – when we are left wondering if the president, her husband, her daughter, and Ruiz will survive.
While there have been many Hollywood blockbusters featuring American presidents displaying intelligence, quick thinking, and action hero skill as they save themselves, their families (oh yeah, and the world), these presidents have almost always been played by white male actors like Harrison Ford (Air Force One [1997]) or Aaron Eckhart (Olympus has Fallen [2013]). Therefore, it is both alarming and hopeful that the Oscar-winning Davis’s powerhouse action hero chops have resulted in the first such leading Hollywood role for a black female and it is even more improbable and noteworthy that she has done this at the age of 59! Besides the 32-year-old Zoe Saldana in Colombiana (2011), the 52-year-old Halle Berry in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019), and Davis herself at 57-years-old in The Woman King (2022), we have rarely seen black female leads in action movies, period.
That a woman, and a black woman, commanding such a role in her fifties is improbable demonstrates the vastness of the embedded racist and sexist inequities of Hollywood and the movie making industry at large that routinely green lights films with older white men as action movie leads (like Ben Affleck = 52, Tom Cruise = 62, Matt Damon = 54, Mel Gibson = 69, Liam Neeson = 72, Keanu Reeve = 60, Arnold Schwarzenegger = 77, Sylvester Stallone = 78, Jason Statham = 57, Jean Claude Van Damme = 64, Mark Wahlberg = 53, Bruce Willis = 70, Harrison Ford = 82, and others).
That this slick, action-packed movie got made at all, is surely due to the combined focus and influence of the producing trio of Davis, Anderson, and Rodríguez and the undeniable star power of Davis. All hail Madam President!