A sitting U.S. President takes up arms to save the world from the dangers of cryptocurrency (!) in G20, a delirious new Die Hard clone now streaming on Prime Video. The slick production values suggest there’s some entertainment value here, but the mind-numbing script might lower your IQ the longer you keep watching. If Drop, now playing in cinemas, was Die Hard on a date, this one is Die Hard for Dummies.
You know what you’re getting into from G20‘s very first scene. A standard black market meet-and-greet in a Catholic church, as the villains set out to buy the movie’s MacGuffin—murdering the seller (Angela Sarafyan) in the process, proving just how bad they are. In these types of things, the MacGuffin is some kind of weapon of mass destruction that will be used to threaten humanity over the course of the rest of the movie.
But in G20, the MacGuffin is a physical bitcoin wallet loaded with cryptocurrency. “Show me the money first,” the seller demands before handing it over. Wait, what?! This shadowy black market meet is just a crypto transaction? If only there were some easier way to transfer Bitcoin!
But now—horror of horrors—the bad guys are in possession of a large amount of Bitcoin. What will they spend it on? Hold up there. Don’t underestimate chief baddie Rutledge (Antony Starr, getting a welcome chance to employ his native Kiwi accent). He’s not going to spend it—not yet, anyway. He’s going to artificially inflate the value of Bitcoin and make bank. Yes, the plot of G20 is your standard crypto pump-and-dump.
But just how will Rutledge inflate the value of Bitcoin? Well, he’s got an army of mercenaries booked as security detail at the upcoming G20 conference in Cape Town. The plan: kidnap the leaders of the world, get them to say a pangram, create sly deepfake videos validating conspiracy theories about world currencies… and profit? Rutledge turns to the camera to tell everyone to buy Bitcoin, just in case.
It’s the perfect plan. And one that requires kidnapping world leaders and getting them to say “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” because the thousands of hours of them saying other stuff on camera just wasn’t enough for a convincing deepfake. Note to self: never say “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” on camera.
But Rutledge didn’t take into account one thing. The President of the United States of America Danielle Sutton (Viola Davis) and—why not—her entire immediate family, including First Gentleman Derek Sutton (Anthony Anderson) and teenage kids Serena (Marsai Martin) and Demetrius (Christopher Farrar). Somehow, these guys slipped through the hostage crisis—each of them independently—and will now go John McClane to foil the master plan.
These characters and other world leaders take up the bulk of G20‘s running time, but they are all such flawless human beings that their scenes become mind-numbing. We appreciate John McClane for his honest character flaws. You will hate all these people and their families for their artificial perfection. Except for British Prime Minister Oliver Everett (Douglas Hodge), a sarcastic jerk who turns sniveling sycophant in agreeably realistic fashion.
No, you will be rooting for Rutledge here, as the lone character of any real drive; Starr’s giddy performance, too, elevates the film whenever he’s on screen. But you’ll cringe as the rest of G20‘s script tries to convince us that the rebels are the bad guys and it’s our world leaders that are truly the selfless heroes that will sacrifice themselves to save us from war and terrorism. And Bitcoin, and AI, and deepfakes, and everything else we’re told to be scared of.
G20 makes for a fascinating comparison to contemporary real-life politics, where it’s the guy in the White House running shady crypto pump-and-dumps. But one can agree with everything that G20 stands for while feeling insulted by the facetious pandering and brain-dead cryptoeconomics on display here. The slick filmmaking from director Patricia Riggen and generally well-executed action scenes (until an awful helicopter finale) can only go so far—there’s too much guilt to derive any pleasure here.
