Heads of State: Way over the top

Heads of State (2025) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, and quite generously, despite strong action violence and profanity

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang 

This relentlessly silly movie will require a lot of patience, even from undemanding viewers inclined to be forgiving.

 

When Air Force One is blown out of the sky during a coordinated drone attack, U.S.
President Will Derringer (John Cena, left) and UK Prime Minister Sam Clarke
(Idris Elba) wonder if the next few minutes will be their last...

It’s basically a live-action cartoon, and the dog-nuts script — by Harrison Query, Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec — has plot holes large enough to swallow Air Force One. I frequently was reminded of Jackie Chan’s goofiest martial arts comedies, and the degree to which this flick succeeds, does so for the same reason: sheer star power.

Idris Elba and John Cena are a lot of fun together, and appear to have a great time in the midst of all the chaos ... so we do, as well. 

 

To a point.

 

Will Derringer (Cena) is the gung-ho President of the United States: a political neophyte after a successful career as an action movie star. Imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Governator as the President: Derringer constantly employs Cena’s wide smile as if he’s greeting folks on the Hollywood red carpet, as opposed to anything resembling a statesman.

 

Sam Clarke (Elba) is Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, a relentlessly serious man who grieves over the state of the world, and quietly despairs over his inability to make things better. He’s refined, well-educated and loathes Derringer’s glib, glad-handed egocentricity; Derringer, in turn, never has forgiven Clarke for a deliberate slight during the U.S. presidential campaign.

 

But we don’t meet them immediately. Director Ilya Naisheller opens with a prologue set amid Spain’s annual Tomatina, a tomato-throwing festival that takes place in the town of Buñol, and is famed as the world’s largest food fight. Senior MI6 agent Noel Bisset (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) leads a surveillance team that hopes to capture notorious terrorist Viktor Gradov (Paddy Considine), who has been spotted in the town square.

 

Alas, it turns out to be a trap; Bisset and her entire team are ambushed by thugs led by Viktor’s ruthless pet assassins, Sasha and Olga (Alexander Kuznetsov and Katrina Durden, both impressively nasty).

 

This sequence is typical of the frequent, brutal violence that often works against the story’s humor, and also stretches the generous PG-13 rating.

 

Much as Clarke and Derringer dislike each other, they’re forced to make a public show of togetherness and mutual respect — displaying the long-standing “special relationship” between the U.S. and UK — while attending a NATO meeting in Italy. It’s a crucial gathering, because membership is wavering, in the face of an increasingly hostile and unpredictable world.

Companion: Insufficiently developed

Companion (2025) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual content, strong violence and relentless profanity

Available via: MAX

By Derrick Bang

This is an intriguing companion piece to I’m Not a Robot, which recently won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.

 

Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid) get a warm greeting, upon arriving at the
setting for their weekend getaway. Alas, a promised "happy outing" soon takes a sinister
turn...

Writer/director Drew Hancock's modest feature takes the core premise into more disturbing territory.  Alas, his film overstays its welcome; it would have made an excellent hour-long episode of the British TV series Black Mirror, but at 97 minutes Hancock flails his way through an increasingly contrived third act.

Iris (Sophie Thatcher) is introduced while shopping for groceries. Her movements are oddly precise, almost dreamlike ... and, indeed — as we learn momentarily — she’s recalling how she “met cute” with boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid). They’re actually en route to a weekend getaway at an attractive home miles off the beaten track.

 

(A bit more opulent than the horror-clichéd  “cabin in the woods,” but the essential remoteness is no different.)

 

Longtime friends Eli (Harvey Guillén), Patrick (Lukas Gage) and Kat (Megan Suri) already are present, as is their host: the grizzled Sergey (Rupert Friend), much older than the others, who looks — and sounds — like a Russian mobster.

 

(One wonders how our youthful quintet ever met Sergey, let alone wangled such an invitation ... and Kat’s “explanation” is an eyebrow lift. But we gotta roll with it.)

 

As this first day passes, Iris’ submissive behavior around Josh becomes more obvious, in a Stepford Wives sort of way. She’s beyond submissive; it’s more a case of genuinely worshipping the ground on which he walks. When she describes what it’s like to have made Josh part of her life, she says, “It’s like this piece of you that you didn’t know was broken, and suddenly it’s fixed.”

 

Thatcher’s performance is unsettling and disturbing; is Iris a battered girlfriend?

 

Um ... no.

 

Iris actually is an “emotional support robot.” (This isn’t a spoiler, because the poster art and trailer reveal as much.) Her “love link” has been “established” with Josh, and thus she’s his — well — permanent, no-request-is-too-much girlfriend.

 

These artificial companions can be custom-modified in all sorts of ways — eye and hair color, vocal pitch, intelligence level, and more — via a tablet that Josh never lets out of his sight. Watching several of those options explored in rapid succession, at one point, is a clever bit of special effects.

 

Tellingly, such companions cannot lie.

Scream: Typical slice 'n' dice

Scream (2022) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong bloody violence, gore, relentless profanity and some sexual references

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.14.22

Sigh. Everything old is new again.

 

The Halloween series has risen from the grave repeatedly; 1960’s Psycho was re-imagined as the TV series Bates Motel; and Netflix will debut a re-boot of Texas Chainsaw Massacre next month.

 

With varying levels of interest, skepticism and outright disbelief, the possible next victims
of the ongoing murder spree — from left, Wes (Dylan Minnette), Richie (Jack Quaid),
Sam (Melissa Barrera) and Dewey (David Arquette) — listen while the horrific
situation's "rules" are explained.

Ergo, why not similarly revive Scream?

The first film’s 1996 debut quickly spawned a trilogy that “concluded” four years later. 2011’s Scream 4 attempted — and failed — to breathe new life into the murder sprees occurring in small-town Woodsboro; a three-season television series, from 2015-19, had nothing to do with the franchise beyond borrowing its name.

 

Creator Kevin Williamson’s shrewd “gimmick” — he scripted the first, second and fourth films — is that these characters are well versed in horror films, and speak knowledgably about what one should (and shouldn’t) do, when confronted with a masked killer murder spree.

 

But more often than not, they ignore their own well-researched advice. With predictable results.

 

The movie-obsessed killers, as well, are required to act according to certain genre expectations. Finally, there are three well-established rules:

 

1) Never trust the love interest;

 

2) The killer’s motive always is connected to something in the past; and

 

3) The first victim always belongs to a “friend group” that the killer is part of.

 

As the series progressed, it became increasingly self-referential and meta, with each fresh set of characters (victims) debating the merits (or lack thereof) of a film series — Stab, Stab 2, etc. — that exploits these Woodsboro tragedies. This, in turn, spawns fresh killing sprees by new maniacs concealed behind the Ghostface mask, which prompts further Stab entries. Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

(Honestly, you’d think Woodsboro would have run out of residents by now.)

 

The question, then, is whether this 2022 entry has anything fresh to say. The answer: Slightly yes, mostly no.

Logan Lucky: Misfit heist comedy beats the odds

Logan Lucky (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and somewhat harshly, for brief profanity and crude language
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.25.17

Director Steven Soderbergh appears to have been bitten by the Fargo bug.

The droll, slow-burn Logan Lucky could be described as a cross between Soderbergh’s Oceans 11 and that iconic 1996 crime thriller — and its more recent, and ongoing, television adaptation — with additional regional absurdity supplied by an impudent original script credited to “Rebecca Blunt.”

Jimmy (Channing Tatum, right) employs a cardboard diorama to explain his "perfect
scheme" for robbing the heavily guarded underground vault at the Charlotte Motor
Speedway, as his brother Clyde (Adam Driver) reacts with mounting disbelief.

The quotes are intentional, because no such person exists. As yet, this film’s writer hasn’t been identified, although sources have suggested Soderbergh, or his wife Jules Asner, or several other possibilities. Certainly Soderbergh is no stranger to pseudonyms; indeed, he employs two for Logan Lucky, having supplemented his director’s duties as both cinematographer (under the name Peter Andrews) and editor (as Mary Ann Bernard).

The narrative here certainly displays Soderbergh’s long-established dry wit and arch sense of humor, and the film is guaranteed to delight viewers who appreciate the methodical build-up and eccentric characters that more frequently populate British quasi-comedies.

The storyline takes its time while bringing the primary characters to the stage. The setting is small-town West Virginia, where divorced, down-on-his-luck Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) never gets to spend enough time with doting young daughter Sadie (Farrah Mackenzie, cute as a button). Jimmy’s intentions are good, but circumstances always interfere, much to the displeasure of ex-wife Bobbie Jo (Katie Holmes), now married to the insufferably wealthy — and insufferably smug — Moody (David Denman).

Jimmy spends considerable time commiserating with his brother Clyde (Adam Driver), who lost an arm during war service in Iraq, and now tends bar at a local dive rather oddly dubbed the Duck Tape. Clyde is convinced that every member of their clan is doomed by a longstanding “family curse,” hence his missing arm, and Jimmy’s injury-related limp, with similar misfortune stretching back generations.

Their sister Mellie (Riley Keough) sniffs at such nonsense, and well she should; there’s certainly nothing amiss in her life. Far from it: Aside from being a talented and popular hairdresser, Mellie is obsessed by cars to a degree that extends way beyond being able to quote make and model stats like a baseball fan; she also can hot-wire anything — and always carries the necessary supplies for such endeavors — and knows local traffic patterns, night and day, with the facility demonstrated by taxi-driving Stan Murch, in Donald Westlake’s marvelous Dortmunder novels.