Producers: Peter Safran and John Rickard Director: Ilya Naishuller Screenplay: Josh Applebaum, André Nemec and Harrison Query Cast: Idris Elba, John Cena, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Carla Gugino, Jack Quaid, Stephen Root, Sarah Niles, Richard Coyle, Aleksandr Kuznetsov, Katrina Durden, Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Clare Foster, Adrian Lukis, Sharlto Copley and Paddy Considine Distributor: Prime Video/Amazon-MGM Studios
Grade: C
There’s not much to this movie, a silly buddy action-comedy about a bickering US President and British Prime Minister who bond after Air Force One is shot down by a Russian terrorist and they’re forced to fend for themselves in hostile territory, but it does serve as a case study of how even the dumbest pictures can be affected by radical changes in real-world politics.
John Cena plays Will Derringer, a newly-elected US President—a former action movie star turned popular politician (think an American-born Arnold Schwarzenegger)—en route to a NATO conference in Italy. He’s come to England for a brief stopover with British Prime Minister Sam Clarke (Idris Elba), a prim and proper sort who worked his way up from humble beginnings through the ranks—Army, Parliament and government—and has little respect for a publicity-hound celebrity like Derringer. Will, meanwhile, is still smarting over Clarke’s decision to have a fish-and-chips lunch with his opponent during the recent campaign, reading that as an endorsement of the other guy.
So their meeting would be uncomfortable even if it weren’t happening in the shadow of an intelligence disaster—a joint CIA-MI6 operation in Spain to capture elusive Russian arms dealer Viktor Gradov (Paddy Considine, a decidedly dull villain) that turned out to be a trap in which many agents were killed, apparently including team leader Noel Bisset (Priyanka Chopra Jonas), and a cutting-edge global system of surveillance and data storage was hacked by Gradov’s computer genius Arthur Hammond (Stephen Root, whose comic talents are sadly underused).
After a prickly press conference in which the two men publicly show their annoyance with each other, their respective chief advisors—Will’s Simone Bradshaw (Sarah Niles) and Clarke’s Quincy Harrington (Richard Coyle)—suggest that to rehabilitate the Anglo-American “special relationship,” Clarke fly with Derringer aboard Air Force One to the conference in Trieste. Both men are thus aboard the plane—a new one, as Will emphasizes with inordinate pride—when Gradov’s interceptors attack. They alone are able to parachute out before it goes down with a bang.
The world presumes they’ve died along with everyone else, but they’ve landed alive and impossibly unscathed—unfortunately in the wilds of Belarus (the geography is admittedly a bit fuzzy). After an encounter with some ruffians they’re transported in a sheep cart to Poland by a gruffly admiring farmer (Ingeborga Dapkunaite) and take refuge at a so-called safe house in Warsaw, where they’re welcomed by enthusiastic agent Marty Comer (Jack Quaid). Unfortunately, the place is assaulted by a small army of Gradov’s minions led by assassins Olga (Katrina Durden) and Sasha (Aleksandr Kuznetsov).
The third act features a supposed corpse returned to life; one of those chases through the streets of a lovely city, marked by random destruction, that have become commonplace in such fare; and a big finale set at the NATO conference, where the alliance is on the verge of collapse (a result of embarrassing files leaked by Gradov) despite the efforts of Elizabeth Kirk (Carla Gugino), the US Vice President raised to the presidency as a result of Derringer’s presumed death; and a last massive intervention from Gradov and his army. That’s followed by a postscript featuring yet another resurrection.
“Heads of State” is billed as an action comedy, but the emphasis is on the former, with the latter limited to rather lame banter between the stars and the sequences featuring Dapkunaite and Quaid, who are actually funnier than the leads despite Herculean efforts from Elba and Cena to inject energy into their scenes together. (Quaid earns more laughs in his brief turn than he did in the whole of the misguided “Novocaine.”) To be sure, the action set-pieces, as staged by director Ilya Naishuller, a bevy of stunt people and cinematographer Ben Davis, are reasonably well done, and Steven Price’s score supplies them with the familiar beats. But as edited by Tom Harrison-Read they drag on to inordinate length—that chase through Trieste seems to last forever, as does the final showdown with Gradov. Otherwise the picture looks good, thanks to Davis and production designer Niall Moroney.
Throughout its convolutions the script has gone to extremes to keep us guessing about the identity of the chief villain behind the whole plot. Is it Gradov? He’s surely a bad fellow, but the writers suggest there’s someone else pulling the strings, and point an accusing finger at either Bradshaw or Harrington (or both). The identity of the person in charge won’t be revealed here, but when the motive behind all the skullduggery is revealed, it takes a form that seems more reflective of 2022-2023, when the movie was shot, than to 2024. In the earlier period, it was the general consensus that one of then-President Biden’s triumphs was in strengthening, even expanding, NATO, and the success of Derringer and Clarke lies in saving the alliance against the evil designs of someone whose denigration of it from an “America First” perspective sounds now like the actual rhetoric of the Trump administration. Even Derringer’s earlier gloating over his new Air Force One assumes a satirical tone in view of Trump’s eagerness to accept a plane from Qatar as his official, more palatial presidential ride.
Perhaps the real-life political shift played a role in the decision to forgo a theatrical release and send “Heads of State” directly to the streaming service affiliated with Jeff Bezos, who’ cultivating President Trump’s favor now. Or maybe not; in any venue the movie would remain a brainless exercise in comic slapstick, wit-free dialogue and overextended action set-pieces.