On the Fifth Day of Die Hard, My True Love Gave To Me...

As I’ve noted before, the easiest way to get a character involved in a Die HardThe 1980s were famous for the bombastic action films released during the decade. Featuring big burly men fighting other big burly men, often with more guns, bombs, and explosions than appear in Michael Bay's wildest dreams, the action films of the decade were heavy on spectacle, short on realism. And then came a little film called Die Hard that flipped the entire action genre on its head. is to have them be some kind of law enforcement or other official. If they have a professional interest in the terrorist scheme, as well as a personal stake, then it’s much easier to get their character moved onto the board to force them into the Die Hard scenario. Be they a police officer, a Navy Seal, an armored truck guard, or the like, that vested stake means they’ll keep coming back (especially in sequels) to take on the bad guys again and again.

Amazon’s G20, from 2025, certainly understands that. It has all the basic building blocks of a Die Hard built into its core concept. Hell, its professional character is the President of the United States, showing that we can have that concept more than once (see also Air Force One). Terrorists attack, but they’re really after money, and the President has to save not only themselves but also their family and a bunch of innocent bystanders from these scheming, well organized thieves. It’s as tried and true a Die Hard clone as you can get.

The one key difference, though, is that this film was made on a TV budget. G20 was not a huge, theatrical release. Instead it was produced direct-for-streaming, released solely on Amazon Prime, and then quickly forgotten about after. Watching it, you can see why. This is a cheaply made, cheaply slapped together film that is only barely elevated by its lead actress, Viola Davis. I’m not sure if she thought she was signing on for a bigger film than what G20 became, but it is clear that Davis is far too good for this cheaply made bit of Die Hard cinema. Just because you have the formula doesn’t mean you can automatically make a good Die Hard clone, and G20 is about as far from good as you can get.

Davis stars as President Danielle Sutton, a war hero who ran for office and found herself at the top of the Executive Branch. Her opponents say she’s in over her head, and they use the fact that Sutton can’t even keep her own daughter, Serena (Marsai Martin), in check, as the younger Sutton keeps escaping from the White House right out from under the Secret Service’s nose. It’s the kind of drama the President doesn’t need as she’s on the verge of announcing a new monetary fund to help developing nations, hopefully with the backing of other countries at the upcoming G20 summit.

Sutton’s plans, though, will quickly get put on hold as the summit quickly goes off the rails. That’s thanks to Edward Rutledge (Antony Starr), a former Australian Special Forces officer who feels like his country left him out to dry after his service was over. He blames Australia, and every other developed nation at the G20, and he wants what he feels he’s due: lots and lots of money. His plan is to take over the summit, deepfake all the world leaders, and then use their AI likenesses to crash the world’s economy so that his bitcoin investments skyrocket. And he might just get away with it, too, unless Sutton and her Secret Service bodyguard, Manny Ruiz (Ramón Rodríguez), have anything to say about it.

G20 is as formulaic as a Die Hard clone can get. We have all the basic setup you’d expect: a big party, a bunch of innocents, a group of terrorists, and her own family caught in the mix. She gets out, goes on the run around the building (a very fancy hotel in South Africa), and has to do all she can to save her family, and everyone else she can, while killing as many terrorists as possible. It’s a well trodden formula because, generally speaking, it works. Hell it very nearly works here, except the production is so inept that it never really comes together.

Part of the problem is the cheapness of the production. The film, we’re told, is set at a massive, luxury hotel meant to host the top world leaders from twenty nations. And yet it feels as cheap and basic as any normal Hilton. We only really see a handful of sets around the hotel, all of which feel like they were filmed at the Vegas version of mid-range accommodations, and that whole air of fancy luxury the film wants to convey never once materializes. The film’s script does more heavy lifting to sell us on the location of the summit than the actual production does.

That also goes for the action on display. There’s plenty of gunfire and explosions, but everything is poorly CGIs. The explosions have about as much reality to them as anything you could see on The CW, which means none at all. It’s so fake and awful looking that it’s laughable, which isn’t the kind of aura you want to convey when we’re supposed to be taking this terrorist attack seriously. The movie really needs us to invest in what’s going on, but it all feels so fake that we never really can.

It doesn’t help that the fight choreography is also bad. Credit to Viola Davis, she’s a solid actress and her scenes where she has to convey president gravitas and commanding presence really work. But any time they need her to hold a gun or do actual brawling she’s not up to the task. I don’t necessarily want to blame her as this is something the fight choreographer needed to work with, they needed to sell her as an accomplished fighter, but that never materializes. So the film does what every cheap action film on a budget does: lots of fast edits to cover up for bad action.

I don’t want to single out Davis, though, because she’s one of the highlights. Her action may not be great but she does have presence. Starr, though, is horribly miscast. The actor is great over on The Boys where he plays the troubled and sociopathic Homelander, but he’s not able to bring the same level of performance here. Whether it’s just that the character he’s given is too thinly written, or that Starr couldn’t invest in the material (and, really, who could blame him?), he’s just not good in the role of the lead terrorist. He is, however, the only terrorist we ever really get to know, so the role of heavy falls squarely on him and, at least in this terrible film, he’s not up to the task.

In short, G20 is bad. Really bad. It’s a cheap and low-effort attempt at a Die Hard that barely manages to create passable entertainment. I didn’t hate the film while I was watching it but that was only because I’ve seen far worse Die Hard clones. If I didn’t have to watch this for a yearly feature documenting all those clones, though, I doubt I would have given this film the time of day. It’s a thin and disposable as they get, which I suppose is good in one respect: no one will remember this film the next time they want to hire Viola Davis, and we should all be glad about that.