Avis des critiques

Sadly, even for the biggest supporter of everything action has had to offer genre-lovers for decades, “G20” remains hard to recommend, as much as it hits those recognizable beats and with its Oscar winner attempting to lead the charge towards the end credits. It’s not even that there’s much to satisfy this particular fanbase; there’s not much here, at all.

Long story short: is G20 good? Not really. Is it fun? Kinda-sorta-sometimes, in a plane movie, no thoughts, head empty, smooth brain way. It would certainly be more fun if it were the 90 minute movie it clearly wants to be, instead of running closer to two hours. But what is most compelling about G20 by far is Viola Davis as action hero

As anyone who saw The Woman King will know, Davis has a formidable screen presence and serious action chops; for all its silliness, there’s plenty of fun to be had watching her slaughter the bad guys amid a diplomatic hail of bullets and canapés.

[D]isposable as it all is, G20 delivers exactly what it sets out to: decent sofaplex thrills that’ll go down easy on a Friday night, in which the President snaps a mercenary’s neck with a machine gun. She’s got our vote.

Davis is one of our greatest actresses, and she’s very good at playing an individual forced to make urgent life-and-death decisions. Give her a lofty speech—she gets several here—and she’s right at home, lending Shakespearean-level gravitas to every phrase and syllable. But she’s rarely called on to show any wit, and G20 is a movie sorely in need of some.

“G20” is an entertaining and gripping action vehicle with a deft sense of tension that is sometimes undone by its on-the-nose dialogue.

G20 isn’t trying to be The Political Film We Need Right Now, its makers smartly picking brawn over brain.

Unburdened by narrative logic, there is a joie de vivre in the way Davis... throws men over her shoulder, elbows them in the face and sprays them with machine-gun fire. Directed by the Mexican film-maker Patricia Riggen, the movie is crudely but joyously feminist, with most of the badass roles taken by women...

Intentions aside, “G20” plays well as a silly action movie. I certainly cackled throughout, making it easy to shrug off the incoherence of the conspiracy plot and the obligatory supermom additions.

Director Patricia Riggan (Under the Same Moon) smartly relies on Davis’s acting muscles and a robust stunt team to carry the adventure. G20 offers mindless full-throttle action, and it doesn’t let up once it gets going. If there’s a major fault, it that it just keeps going, and going, and going.

Mostly, “G20” has two major points in its favor, right out of the gate: a super-fun premise for an action film (what if money-mad mercenaries seized the 20 most powerful leaders of the world and demanded some really insane shit?) and a star both so good and so classy that it never feels as if she’s punching below her weight class.

The plot and supporting characters of “G20” are nothing to write home about, but Viola Davis deserves all the fan mail. She gives this otherwise mediocre movie all she’s got, and she’s got gravitas and humanity and a vicious punch.