G20

It’s nice to depict a president everyone can rally around regardless of party affiliation, but G20 would be voted down on either side of the aisle.

Taking itself too seriously, this gender-reversed variation on the Air Force One approach to the presidency never fully embraces its silliness or absurdity, which is crucial to the popcorn entertainment value of these sorts of throwaway action thrillers.

As the film opens, Danielle Sutton (Viola Davis) is preparing to head to her first G20 summit as U.S. president while navigating a minor scandal involving her teenage daughter (Marsai Martin) eluding security detail at a nightclub.

The South African gathering of world leaders, which she attends alongside her husband (Anthony Anderson) and chief bodyguard (Ramon Rodriguez), among others, will be an opportunity both to calm those waters and advance her own agenda.

“I won’t let this be another summit that’s all talk and no action,” she explains to one of her advisers, without knowing how right she would be.

The meeting is thrown into chaos on the first night, when a security breach enables the infiltration of a terrorist group led by a former military officer (Antony Starr) basically taking high-stakes hostages in exchange for a massive cryptocurrency haul.

With the Secret Service in disarray and Sutton uncertain who she can trust, the future of the free world might be literally in her hands.

Davis brings some emotional depth to her role beyond what the screenplay entails. As both a president and a mother, she’s believable in the role, even as the film directed by Patricia Riggen (The 33) strains to validate Sutton’s brawny credentials, whether showing a martial-arts training session on the White House lawn or her dexterity in climbing up an elevator shaft.

Perhaps it’s for the best that the script doesn’t even bother with logic or motives. Yet beneath the surface, it struggles to generate consistent tension without any meaningful insight into world economic markets, deepfakes and AI, and sociopolitical alliances.

None of that is supposed to matter, though, when the British prime minister (Douglas Hodge) is squealing the tires of the presidential limo or Madam President is roughing up a bad guy while dangling off the side of a helicopter.

It’s definitely intended as an exercise in checking your brain at the door, but G20 would be more fun if it was less predictable.

Rated R, 108 minutes.