The funniest thing about the new action-comedy Heads of State is the casting, and I mean no disrespect to either John Cena (playing action star-turned-U.S. President Will Derringer) or Idris Elba (as UK Prime Minister Sam Clarke), both of whom I typically enjoy a great deal. The two characters have a fairly public rivalry that stems from Clarke not thinking Derringer earned the right to be a world leader, and Derringer being hurt that Clarke isn’t giving him a chance to prove that he knows how to run a government.
But here’s the thing I’m fully willing to admit: I may not be in the mood to laugh about potentially incompetent global leaders squabbling over anything and not doing the job of running the government for the betterment of as many people as possible. Now, I have no reason to believe that these two fictional leaders aren’t doing just that, but I already spend way too much time laughing at our government to do so in my spare time. Maybe it’s just me…
The film opens with a failed attempt by MI6 at retrieving some piece of tech and taking out international terrorist Viktor Gradov (Paddy Considine, always a welcome presence, even as a sneering bad guy) in the process. The only survivor of this botched mission is Agent Noel Bisset (Priyanka Chopra Jonas), who allows people to think she’s dead so she can observe events from the sidelines and figure out who within the U.S. or UK government is a mole working for Gradov.
Meanwhile, the President and Prime Minister have a series of public events scheduled in England to downplay their rivalry and hopefully firm up the two countries’ special relationship. But when their flight on Air Force One to a conference together is downed by Gradov’s group, the world believes both men have perished, when in fact, they were able to grab parachutes to make it down largely unharmed. From this point forward, Heads of State turns into a bickering contest with an occasional fight or chase scene thrown in. The two men eventually figure out that working together helps more than fighting constantly, but that’s hardly newsworthy. Agent Bisset finds the two when they need a big save, and the movie becomes the three of them attempting to thwart a massive conspiracy, figure out who the mole is, and still make the world think they’re buds.
Heads of State has a couple of laughs here and there, thanks in large part to support work from the likes of Jack Quaid (the busiest actor of 2025) and Stephen Root; Carla Gugino’s Vice President Elizabeth Kirk assumes control of the U.S. government for a time and brings some professionalism to the proceedings for a few minutes. But mostly, this is just Cena and Elba on a road trip across Europe trying to find people they can trust to help them, while also avoiding the bad guys who always seem to know where they are at any given moment.
It’s tough to blame the director on this film’s decidedly average appeal. Ilya Naishuller knows his way around an action movie (Nobody, Hardcore Henry), but his previous work (which also includes a great deal of video game direction) was more stylized, and everything about Heads of State feels aimed right at mainstream audiences, with no room for artistic flair. All of the performers are putting in the work, but the silly screenplay left me uninspired and not especially entertained.
The film is now streaming on Prime Video.
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