Academy- Award-winning actress Viola Davis plays the president of the US in the action movie G20. This is yet another president-held-hostage thriller, a subgenre spawned by Harrison Ford’s Air Force One, which in turn was among the seeds planted by the Die Hard franchise.
Now streaming on Amazon Prime, G20 has a more ambitious scenario. Held captive with the American president are other world leaders attending the G20 summit in Cape Town, South Africa. Disgruntled over the way the superpowers have been exploiting Third World countries, the villains pull an elaborate scheme to invade the hotel where the heads of state are billeted. They’re well-armed and trained to overpower the tight security. The plot has much to do with crypto currency, a not-too-exciting premise for fans of this genre. Just take it as a banal attempt at being relevant.
G20 is standard action movie. Plot-wise, it doesn’t offer anything new—it‘s just a fill-in-the-blanks opus that plays like an undistinguished Jean-Claude Van Damme epic. As in previous movies of this kind, the main protagonist is forced to hide within the building and figure out a way to free the hostages.
The writing is elementary. A speech the president reads during a press briefing sounds like a sixth grader’s work. We’re also given obvious clues to how the leads might handle a hostage situation. First Daughter can expertly switch RFID card codes, and Madame President Sutton has served in the army and is into martial arts. When the going in Cape Town gets tough, the respective skills of mother and daughter are predictably put to good use.
We’ve seen news clips of US presidents traveling to other countries and apparently, the filmmakers haven’t. When Madame President arrives in her Cape Town hotel, she’s given the VIP treatment a Paris Hilton is entitled to (especially if it’s a Hilton hotel). Being head of the world’s most powerful nation, Madam President deserves much more. We’ve seen Anna Wintour arrive with greater fanfare.
Stranger yet is the cocktail party with the heads of states in attendance. President Sutton enters the room, yet everyone is oblivious to her. No one even cranes his neck to catch a glimpse. This seems less an assembly of powerful leaders, and more a corporate product launch. The writers didn’t even try for intelligent small talk between important dignitaries. Once held at gunpoint, none of the leaders is made to display any leadership qualities. The South Korean president and his First Lady are the exceptions. The rest behave like the background actors they really are. They have no impact, hence empathy is non-existent, and suspense minimal.
Also preposterous is the uncomplicated way the terrorists overpower the well-trained security detail of each leader. It’s all too fast and so easy to attribute this to a traitor within the presidential staff.
Perhaps my expectations for G20 were too high. But this in an original Amazon production starring and produced by a highly acclaimed actress. Yes, Viola Davis produced it, and she could have hired better writers. Her own performance is also disappointing, especially since she‘s revered for elevating the movies she‘s in. Not this one; her Madame President Sutton is devoid of charm and style. If she really wanted to play president she might have fared better in a comedy, like Desperate White Housewives.
So far I’ve enjoyed what Amazon has in its library
So far I’ve enjoyed what Amazon has in its library. It owns MGM, and it offers us an appealing selection of the films Woody Allen made in the ‘70s and ’80s, as well as the Pink Panther and James Bond 007 titles. The even older classics are also available, from the original West Side Story and Fiddler on the Roof to 12 Angry Men and Some like it Hot.
I’m still waiting for Amazon to start streaming Gene Kelly’s classic MGM movies. So far none of them has been streamed, at least not here in the Philippines.
But we can count on YouTube in discovering hidden gems. Last week, we found a brief clip of a Gene Kelly TV special, Dancing, A Man’s Game. Originally aired in 1958, the clip begins with Kelly introducing 15-year-old Fil-American dancer Patrick Adiarte. They do a tap routine, Kelly tapping the traditional way and Adiarte the modern way.
For those too young to know who Patrick Adiarte is, he played the crown prince in the classic film version of The King and I. In the film he makes a grander entrance than the leads (Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr). And yes, it’s much grander than the entrance Viola Davis made in G20.
He was later cast in a pivotal role in the original stage production of the Gene Kelly-directed Flower Drum Song. He then reprised it in the film version. Watch it and be amazed at how Adiarte can dance.
April has been a sad month for the entertainment world. We lost three beloved stars within two weeks—Pilita Corrales, Nora Aunor, and Hajji Alejandro. The passing of Patrick Adiarte at 81 was hardly noticed here in his birth country. It was reported in leading American entertainment news sites like Variety and here, by the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
I actually learned much about Adiarte from the Instagram page of Gene Kelly’s wife, Patricia Kelly. She posted a loving tribute to Adiarte and even wrote about his childhood.
Born in 1942, he, with his family, was imprisoned in Cebu during the Japanese Occupation perhaps because his father was a captain in the US Army Corps of Engineers. The father was killed after Patrick’s mother, the two-year-old Patrick and his older sister escaped. They sustained injuries when Japanese soldiers gave chase and threw grenades at them. Since his mother required advanced surgery for her face injuries, the Adiartes traveled to New York through Ellis Island.
Patrick and his mother later joined the cast of the original Broadway production of The King and I. He was around 10 years old then, and was cast as one of the royal children. In 1956, the Adiartes were granted American citizenship through the help of then Sen. John F. Kennedy. In the’60s and ‘70s, Patrick appeared on TV shows like Hullabaloo, which showcased his singing and dancing skills. He was a semi-regular cast member of M*A*S*H, and did guest spots in The Brady Bunch, Kojak, and Hawaii 5-0.
Patricia Kelly recounted in FB that she met with Patrick Adiarte for dinner several years ago. She said he graciously acknowledged Gene Kelly as a great mentor. Gene Kelly once said, “If there’s gonna be another Fred Astaire, it might well be Pat.”
