“The G” (2023) stars Dale Dickey as you have never seen her before! She plays Ann Hunter, an older woman who is the loving and protective, though negligent, caretaker for her husband, Chip (Greg Ellwand), and adores her granddaughter in sprit, Emma (Romane Denis), who aspires to emulate her. Unfortunately, an unscrupulous group of people target Ann and Chip and succeed at getting the court to award a conservatorship over the couple, so they could take their money and get paid for the privilege. When the payday is not as big as expected, they get rough; however, Ann is used to handling tough guys. Will she get revenge or realize what is really important in life?
One of the few reasons that it is good to be alive is to see the emerging genre of older women becoming onscreen vigilantes and action heroes. Ann is tough as nails, and her mouth can cash those checks, but no one sees her coming because she is an older woman plus, they have leverage to stop her in her tracks: the people that she loves. It is not a long list, but it is enough. Dickey is a revelation as Ann, and the most shocking part of her role is that she really decided in the eleventh hour of her career to let the girls get some air and have a sex scene. It is so subversive because young actors are constantly being exploited into doing nude scenes and feeling powerless whereas older women are supposed to be sexless so depicting them as sexual, desirable beings in a society that wants women to feel as if they are aging like milk is revolutionary. Ann glows up the more that she decides to destroy her enemies, and if you ever wanted to see someone eat baby carrots in dip like a badass, “The G” is a must-see movie.
Dickey makes prose dumps about her character’s life sound interesting. Normally I would prefer to see it happen, but nope, give me a movie with Ann just talking about her life while everyone just sits around with their mouths agape in astonishment. When she finally gets physical, it is more realistic than “The Old Woman with the Knife” (2025), but just as satisfying, though too brief. There are a few moments when she gets into hot water, and it all works out because someone said it did, and the action happened off screen.
Dickey and Denis have great chemistry and are the heart of the film, especially how they both inspire each other. Intergenerational relationships are so invigorating on screen, and “The G” could have leveraged this appeal more. Emma socializes with a crew of older women at a knitting club, and there was so much unfulfilled potential in this scenario that never gets revisited. What would have happened if Emma corralled her own army of knitting ladies? Hearne even focuses one shot on the knitting needles’ sharpness. Instead, Hearne prioritizes romantic storylines when he did not need to choose. At least the romance elements were appealing and grounded, especially when used to illustrate the similarities and differences in Ann and Emma’s mindsets. Joseph (Roc Lafortune), a fellow resident, clearly has it bad for Ann even though she is trouble. It is delicious to watch her order him around. Meanwhile Matt (Joe Scarpellino), an independent contractor who meets Emma outside Christ the King Eldercare Facility is the equivalent of a hot guy with golden retriever energy.
It makes intellectual sense to explicitly parallel Ann and Emma’s lives, but Emma’s story is innately less compelling. No shade intended because Denis does a great job in playing someone trying to be like The G, her nickname for Ann. Denis did a good job showing how hard it is for a normal person to lean into ruthlessness since she was not brought up in that life. Emma’s storylines make the story more convoluted and makes her character seem a little dumb. For some reason, her former employer is not connected to the conspiracy although it feels like a misstep or something that ended up on the cutting room floor.
It is understandable that “The G” would run towards the gangster implications of conservators kidnapping, beating up and killing old people, but it felt as if there was supposed to be more of a storyline involving every branch of government and the church, which would make Emma’s story more central, but because it gets cut, or it was too ambitious to execute, it makes Emma’s slice of the pie seem extraneous. Writer and director Karl R. Hearne should have done one more script revision, but Denis and Dickey make it work. The ironic part is that the narrative’s premise is plausible minus the criminal underworld’s involvement. It is probably scarier to play the conceit straight (Wendy Williams) but avoiding it for flashier conniving may have been the cardinal sin committed.
Emma’s stepdad, Charles (Danie Brochu), also seems as if he was supposed to have a weightier role with his fight against the system to free his family despite his setething, long-standing resentment of Ann, but his appearance feels like a non sequitur. He is supposed to be a sign that there is a threat of division between Ann and Emma over a serious misunderstanding. It is another casualty of the cutting room floor because the Damocles sword of estrangement never feels credible. It was disappointing to never find out the true rift between Chip and Charles. He effectively functions as a foreboding device as he describes Chip as a once fearsome bruiser, and Hearne shows how Chip has missed a step while Ann is hiding her light under a bushel. If she could roll with Chip when he was young, then it explains why Ann is so unphased when the bad guys roll up on her home in the middle of the night. It is not her first rodeo.
The villain, Rivera (Bruce Ramsay), is suitably possessed and calculating. Only one to two of his henchmen are individuated, but that is better than most movies. Ralph (Jonathan Koensgen) takes too much pleasure in hurting people and is a bit of a wild card. Unfortunately, he also resembles the Stranger (Christian Jadah), Jack’s son from Ann’s home in East Texas and a soldier sent to obey her orders so some viewers may confuse the two. There are a couple of characters who clearly work for Rivera, but the audience is supposed to be surprised when it is revealed though their very existence in that world screams, “I work for Rivera.”
There is a thread devoted to Jesus and winning Ann’s soul for good, but it never quite connects. There cannot be a transformation if Ann always loved her “granddaughter” when at the end, she realizes that Emma matters more to Ann than money, which is depicted in the opening scene. Do any of these flaws matter? No, we want to see how Ann gets out of this predicament, and because Dickey can deliver, “The G” soars.
