‘The G’ movie review: Dale Dickey excels in a thriller that proves revenge is a dish best served old
Everyone knows veteran character actor Dale Dickey from somewhere, but rarely from a leading role. Taking top billing in writer, producer, and director Karl R. Hearne’s dark revenge thriller, The G presents the perfect showcase for its star’s distinct sense of grizzled charisma and ageing badassery.
Inspired by both Hearne’s own grandmother and the vast increase in elderly people falling victim to scams, Dickey’s Ann Hunter and her husband are put in a care home against their will by a corrupt legal guardian seeking to make a quick buck under the belief the couple has a stash of hidden assets. When tragedy strikes, she concocts a method of exacting revenge that draws her surrogate granddaughter (Romane Denis’ Emma) into the mix.
In a classic case of the decision-makers underestimating who they’ve gotten on the wrong side of, Ann foreshadows what’s coming by issuing an ominous warning to another resident of the facility. “I’m not a good person,” she muses. “But I do have other qualities”. From there, she calls in several favours to turn the tide in her favour, and if anything, she undersells precisely what those qualities are.
Shining a light on how society often disregards the elderly as either an inconvenience or a get-rich-quick scheme, depending on the situation, Hearne takes those very real societal sentiments and applies them to a noir-tinged thriller that’s ice-cold in terms of both its wintry setting and the resolve of its protagonist.
With her assets and independence stripped away and her family restricted in visiting her, the prison-like care home tries to strangle the very life out of Ann, who responds in kind by gradually revealing more and more of her backstory, something that soon turns into a living nightmare for the snake oil salesmen who essentially imprisoned her in the first place.
This isn’t Dickey doing Taken by any stretch of the imagination, but that’s something the world deserves to see anyway based on The G. Her lived-in features and world-weariness are perfect for Ann’s self-destructive, barely-contained rage and fury, slowly shedding the skin of a hapless pensioner to reveal a battle-hardened warrior that doesn’t have any issues taking the fight to her oppressors either figuratively or literally.
The relationship between Ann and Emma is pivotal in illustrating that there’s still kindness buried somewhere in the former’s vodka-chugging, chain-smoking, and foul-mouthed soul, even if she’s furious at the rest of the world and everyone in it. That juxtaposition is reflected in the trajectory of their current arcs, with the walls closing in on Emma’s involvement in uncovering the truth at the same time Ann widens the scope of her own investigation.
She lives her life by the motto, “If you let your anger out, you live longer”, and by the time the credits roll on The G, it’s not unreasonable to expect Ann to sail past 100 years old. The intensity and ferocity she exudes is palpable, but at the end of the day, she’s still an old woman, with that combination of warmth and boiling rage allowing Dickey to be nothing short of entirely believable as someone capable of getting kicked out of their knitting circle, safeguarding their grandchild’s life savings out of unconditional love, and wreaking blood-soaked havoc.
