One thing that has been made clear this year is that grandparents are the cool kids, and we are just living in their world. Whether they are running for the top job in American politics, or getting revenge on scammers, like 94-year-old June Squibb in the Sundance hit Thelma, we cannot seem to stop talking about the elderly in 2024. Karl R. Hearne’s pulsing thriller The G, the latest addition to this trend, makes it clear that being old does not correlate with being a pushover.
Similar to Josh Margolin’s Thelma, Hearne uses his own grandmother as the inspiration for his protagonist, Ann Hunter (Dale Dickey). Nicknamed “The G” by her beloved granddaughter by marriage, Emma (Romane Denis), Hunter is the type of woman who is used to giving orders, not taking them. Living a quiet existence with her ailing husband Chip (Greg Ellwand), the foul-mouthed chain-smoking grandmother soon finds her life turned upside when she is placed in legal guardianship.
Bursting into her house during the middle of the night, a mysterious man named Rivera (Bruce Ramsay) holds court-approved documents giving him full control of Hunter and her husband. This includes moving them into a retirement home and administering their finances. Although it is unclear who gave the approval, or why such a move must be done at night, the couple find themselves relocated to an apartment complex where they are confined like prisoners in their room for the first month.
Unable to get in contact with Emma, who only learns about her inlaws’ disappearance when their home is put up for sale a day later, Hunter starts plotting her revenge.
While Rivera, who is after money that Hunter acquired via an inheritance, assumes that she is merely a stubborn old lady, Hunter is something far more dangerous. A tiger whose claws have been sharpened on the carcass of those who dared step in her way, the stern grandmother comes from a family of mobsters. She was raised with individuals who don’t even trust their own kin and will not hesitate to pull the trigger.
As Emma desperately searches for her grandmother and tries to boost her low self-esteem by channelling Hunter’s inner bad ass, Hearne’s film weaves an intriguing and tense tale of vengeance. Using the thriller genre to get audiences thinking about elder abuse and the corruption in the guardianship legal system, The G captures just how easy it is for people to fall through the cracks when no one is looking.
Rather than conveying his message through a John Wick-style actioner, Hearne crafts a nuanced exploration of the hate that can consume us and the forgiveness that frees us. Using Emma, whose life is in shambles and is frustrated with only attracting lecherous domineering men, as an example of the former, The G highlights ripple effect that comes with violence. Even Hunter is weary of the price she has had to pay for her violent ways. At one point she even ponders if she still has it in her to give Riveria his comeuppance.
Anchored by Dale Dickey’s sensational performance, Hunter becomes more than an elderly bad ass. She is a woman who, underneath her steely exterior, has a multitude of layers. Some of the most fascinating moments arrive when the character is her most vulnerable with retirement community member Joseph (Roc Lafortune). While the parallel paths that Hunter and Emma find themselves on provide plenty of avenues to explore their respective depths, it does cause a few challenges from a structural standpoint.
As tightly woven as the first two acts are, Hearne’s scripts backs itself into a corner in the latter sections. In trying to tie up the various narrative strands, the film makes several perplexing choices and leaps in logic that threaten to potentially derail the film. Thankfully, in these rocky moments, Dickey steers the ship in the right direction.
Presenting one of the year’s most unlikely anti-heroes, The G crackles with tension and suspense. A darkly engaging work, the film raises awareness about legal guardianships while showing that the elderly are often sprier than you think.
