After the G20 Summit is overtaken by terrorists, President Danielle Sutton must bring all her statecraft and military experience to defend her family and her fellow leaders.
Let me put this to you as plainly as I can, “G20”: how fucking dare you?
Yes, this follows the trend of jingoistic action movie throwbacks riffing on Die Hard or the Has Fallen series; they’re plain feel-good, action-packed fantasies geared toward certain people who want to feel proud of where they came from and on that front, it sets out to achieve exactly that. “Fun 90’s throwback” might as well have been spray-painted over its forehead because this one tries REALLY hard to be no-thoughts-head-empty from the first frame onwards, accepting itself as the wrong kind of movie to be judged or discussed on the level of plot, theme or artistic choices.
Too bad I’m gonna try anyways. Because there are two big flick in the nuts derailing all of that desperate escapism: TIMING and CONTEXT.
Releasing a movie like this, during the complete and utter constitutional collapse of America’s legislative, executive and judicial institutions turns what should’ve been an achievement into yet ANOTHER disingenuous propaganda machine that’s not just hopelessly phony and wildly out-of-touch but irresponsible and insensitive. And what would normally open the rusted gates to the blandest circle of Hell becomes a self-masturbatory dick-measuring contest that borders on irritation incarnate; its heavy-handed in every avenue it ventures down, meaning every single attempt at nuance is just window-dressing, especially since the political jabs at racism, sexism, power struggles within specific positions of authority, terrorists being born as a tragic product of the callousness and greed from powerful countries and deep-fake technology unraveling global security in a world where the truth no longer matters don’t pick up any traction. They’re either intentionally written vaguely to avoid conflict, or executed in the least interesting manner possible, crowbarred in from better movies. Muddled from the ground up and profoundly misguided in its understanding of current economic and geopolitical trends, we’re just stuck with a hum-drum affair of mediocrity where every narrative and emotional thematic beat can be seen half a mile away and every attempt at emulation rings hollow.
It also doesn’t help the movie fails spectacularly at following through with its semi-campy setup; more self-conscious than it is self-aware, the rather flimsy attempts at brainless silly theatrics trips over the first hurdle and because the tone is so stupidly unbalanced, you can’t do anything BUT take everything at face value with a straight face. Stakes are never high enough, even at the height of the supposed conflict, and as a result, we as an audience can never truly invest in the peril at hand.
Patricia Riggen’s approach to filmmaking is straightforward, with a direct focus on achieving her objectives. However, there is a point where this linearity becomes a hindrance rather than a strength. With her vision so narrowly concentrated, lacking layers of depth or creative exploration, the utilitarian style she employs struggles to present itself as effectively polished or as skillfully executed as it aspires to be.
Honestly, everything here lacks personality and flair can’t even commit to a consistent style or vision, leaving the most important elements to flounder without any urgency or tension; both the presentation and film structure in particular suffer from an almost chronic case of laziness and inattentiveness, the two qualities that drive this operation off the tracks and into the ditch. This production deigns displays brief flashes of the scope and scale of the situation it wants to portray but with the hotel setting feeling so rudimentary and every other set-piece not having any discernible sense of space, it crosses boundaries from window-dressing to painfully artificial dead-ringing.
Costumes hold almost no significance and can be distracting in other instances, pacing is so plodded that the film's would-be energizing thrills end up exhausting and uninspiring, editing is mostly uneventful except for the action sequences, only than does it stumble towards haphazard chain-jerking and everything I heard in Joseph Trapanese’s score is so indistinguishable to other examples used for this genre, so it’s not even worth making a comment about. It helps relay and convey the emotion of what it wants you to feel to middling returns and with everything executed with such slow pacing and low energy, do I really need to harp on?
Also, I’m not too impressed with the action either because let’s be honest: America has an unacknowledged action movie problem; it's rare for there to be fast paced movies with good energy or momentum and they often nose dive into a weird attempt at meta self-aware 'comedy,' mimic video game style antics (inflated characters, too puffy), or try too hard to be pulpy. This barely tries to adhere to any of those styles and just lumbers about, competent in some respects, but also far too restrained and tame considering the premise.
Can’t say much about the cinematography other than it’s fairly adequate. I do like certain instances where the camera shakes to illustrate who’s in control and who isn’t but it doesn’t carry much of a presence on its own. Also, Viola Davis narrowly escapes this unscathed just by…..being Viola Davis; I really wanted to throw the rest of the cast a bone for doing their best with the material but none of them really stood break out the molds of their one-dimensional characters, especially Antony Starr.
How do y’all waste Homelander?
If this was released at any other time, in a much healthier world, I could buy this as just senseless entertainment and sweep it under the rug. But with it being made this way and released at the worst possible time, I’m 100% convinced this was done on purpose as a deluded self-vanity project. Leaving me both bored and quietly fuming at once is its own form of mockery.
