In 'Heads of State,' the special relationship is strictly situational

Yahoo

02-07-2025

On its shiny, happy surface, the action comedy 'Heads of State' is so innocuously disposable that it barely merits attention, let alone critique. Anchored by two enormously appealing stars and unfailingly faithful to the strictures of the genre, this summertime programmer — scheduled just in time to divert filmgoers after they've seen 'F1' and before 'Superman' arrives in theaters — is the kind of cheerfully banal, easy lift that feels custom-made for airplane viewing: It might as well come with its own tray table in the open, unlocked position. (Then again, it's available only on Amazon, so … same thing?)
John Cena plays U.S. President Will Derringer, a square-jawed, Schwarzenegger-esque former movie star whose biggest role — until the White House, at least — was in a franchise called 'Water Cobra.' Idris Elba plays Sam Clarke, a saturnine British prime minister who very much did not support Derringer's election; the two are headed to a NATO meeting in Trieste when they get word that a joint CIA-MI6 operation has gone awry, with the British agent Noel Bisset (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) having gone missing after the decimation of her team. Soon enough, Derringer and Clarke are joining forces in a globe-trotting mission to save Western democracy and their own skins; this is not a special relationship but a situational one, with Clarke's cool English reserve continually butting up against Derringer's can-do naivete.
Directed by Ilya Naishuller from a script by Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec and Harrison Query, 'Heads of State' does a nimble job of going through the rote motions: As Derringer and Clarke bond on a road trip that takes them from London to Belarus to Poland and beyond, their bromance is metronomically punctuated by increasingly preposterous seisms of violence; standout scenes include a hair-raising stunt set aboard Air Force One (Harrison Ford, eat your heart out), as well as a pyrotechnical car chase involving the Beast, the bulletproof, heavily armored presidential state car. Real-world adjacencies abound in 'Heads of State,' which centers on a plot to destroy NATO — just days after a NATO summit that was notable for its leaders' obeisance to the current U.S. president, himself a former reality TV star (and, at one point, an outspoken NATO critic). But don't mistake 'Heads of State' for a political satire a la 'Mountainhead,' another small-screen feature that in another era would have played in theaters. The filmmakers here aren't interested in polemic as much as alternating between cartoonish savagery and disarming sentimentalism.
Like Cena's fictional president, that combination is quintessentially American, given a congenial sheen with lots of jokes and we're-just-having-fun-here japes, never mind that the guns, grenades, rocket launchers and high-tech crossbows result in fiery carnage and an unholy body count, with nary an unseemly consequence. That's just the kind of PG-13-friendly hypocrisy that is baked into a form of entertainment that Derringer insists on calling 'cinema' (part of the fun of the movie is watching Cena's super-jacked doofus name-check Wes Anderson and Bong Joon Ho). Carping about the promiscuous violence in 'Heads of State' and its ilk is just the kind of scolding that makes Clarke's character such a dreary old stick — a role that Elba leans into with handsome relish. He and Cena — whose self-aware humor is on high alert throughout — develop an easygoing chemistry, and they receive ample support from Jack Quaid, Carla Gugino and Sarah Niles, the last of whom is a bright spot in 'F1.'
As a blithely likable blunt instrument, 'Heads of State' gets the job done, justifying its anesthetized mayhem with a sweet-natured message about the importance of friendship, international alliances and institutional continuity. Lessons in filial loyalty by way of fireballs and fusillades: President Derringer might call it cinema, but everybody else knows it's only a movie.
PG-13. Available on Amazon Prime. Contains sequences of strong violence/action, language and some smoking. 113 minutes.