3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): G20

2025, Patricia Riggen (Girl in Progress) -- Amazon

Speaking of using Die Hard as a template, I am not sure what the whole point of this movie was. No no, I get it, cheaper than usual, straight-to action flicks attract a certain audience (me, of course) but usually these movies have a "statement", a social or political commentary of some sort, either the main character's background or the motivations behind the bad guy. Oh, I am not saying that the depictions of the Bad Guy's Motivation is a reflection on the screen writer or director's own viewpoint, as more often or not, its just a "throw a dart at something on the current zeitgeist", but usually they say ... something? In The Cleaner the movie was saying "ecological disaster is bad", but in this movie I am not sure if the movie care about anything beyond "a black woman as president". Oh wait, there was a bit about (pun intended), Bitcoin being Good.

OK, preamble. Some guys with guns steal a harddrive from someone... oh, its a cryptowallet, but something much more glaringly obvious and big, big enough that if someone had, say, accidentally lost it in a landfill, it would be much easier to find. And, President Sutton's (Viola Davis, The Woman King) technologically capable and rebellious teenage daughter gets caught sneaking out of the White House, embarrassing her mother just before a big G20 Summit in South Africa. Kids, amiright?

The crux of this summit, for the US, is so Sutton can convince the rest of the 19 to adopt some sort of crypto based policy wherein countries without strong economies would have buying power independent of their wealth. Or something to that effect. I am not big on economics and less so on crypto, beyond believing its all a shell-game scam. The movie makes it both the Big Bad and the Big Saviour, which is kind of confusing for my lil ol brain.

So, the Bad Guys, led by Australian Special Forces soldier Edward Rutledge (Antony Starr, The Boys), infiltrate the summit's security team, kill off anyone who would oppose them, lock everyone in and begin their weird, nefarious scheme. Meanwhile Sutton, her Secret Service lead Agent, Ruiz (Ramón Rodríguez, Will Trent), and a hand-full of other world leaders sneak away during the ensuing chaos. Sutton herself is an ex-soldier, so she tears her dress and changes into her sneakers to stay prepared. While they are doing their cat & mouse game, the aforementioned nefarious scheme gets underway -- get the world leaders to say some keywords which allows the Bad Guys to do some deepfake videos of them, broadcasting to the world how everyone at the summit was scheming to destabilize the rest of the world's economy for their own benefits. And its believed, so as the economies of various countries collapses, Rutledge's fancy crypto wallet.... increases in value? Like Die Hard they say they are there for one thing, but its all really only a way to make loads of cash.

There isn't much to say about the actual thriller-action part of the movie as its all pretty standard forgettable fare. And this is coming from a guy who enjoyed both of the "attack the White House" twin films, and their sequels. Basically she and her escapees run around this fortified hotel, while also trying to keep Sutton's family, who are doing their own survival-escape act, alive and somehow defeat the Bad Guys and save the rest of the summit attendees and foil the economy ruining plan. Sutton is more than capable of being the Bad Ass when the scenes needed it, and just seeing Viola Davis pull that off is a weird, fun energy unto itself. And the nefarious scheme? Once Rutledge is thrown off the top of Nakitomi Plaza, things just... heal themselves? For such a precise choice of nefarious schemes, the movie doesn't seem to care that half the big countries in the world had their economies ruined and their leaders deepfake trashed -- that kind of cat is not easily put back into a bag. But no matter, Bad Guys killed, world leaders freed, family saved. The End.

It wasn't entirely terrible and I recall, while watching, it had its moments (not a lot of these moments stuck), but it is not going to take its place on anyone's action-thriller shelf.  Still not sure what it was trying to say about crypto but it definitely thought that deepfake was very evil. Neither of those a "statement" do make.