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.

 

As a gesture of bonhomie, Clarke agrees to make the trip with Derringer, via Air Force One. Alas, Gradov has other ideas; after a tensely staged airborne attack, Clarke and Derringer are forced to parachute out of the crippled plane, landing somewhere in Belarus. The humor here derives from the fact that — Hollywood being what it is — Derringer never did any of his own stunts, and now he’s forced to improvise amid total chaos. Cena’s panicked expressions are hilarious.

 

Their parting helpful hint from Derringer’s security staff, just before exiting the plane: Get to a safe house in Warsaw.

 

Now on foot, with no weapons, Clarke and Derringer are forced to rely on each other; even so, both take every opportunity for snarky little digs, in the midst of each fresh crisis. There’s no shortage of the latter, since the ongoing plot is little more than a thin excuse for increasingly preposterous peril and mayhem. 

 

Some of it works, some of it doesn’t; Naishuller and cinematographer Ben Davis overdo the slow-motion inserts, and the CGI sometimes is a bit too obvious.

 

On the other hand, a pell-mell vehicular chase is superbly staged, and cheekily set to Motley Crue’s “Kickstart My Heart.” Jack Quaid steals the show during his third-act appearance as undercover operative Marty Comer, an unabashed patriot who can barely control his delight over getting to help Derringer.

 

It’s a shame Quaid’s appearance is so brief; the film needed more of his over-the-top mayhem, particularly when Marty sets a hilarious new standard for the ubiquitous “suiting up” sequence: grenades, ginormous guns — and sunglasses, of course — while the Beastie Boys snarl “Sabotage” in the background.

 

Chopra Jonas is another standout, since Bisset excels at the bad-assery that Derringer can only dream about.

 

Considine doesn’t fare as well. Gradov’s motivations never are clarified — killing Clarke and Derringer likely would make NATO countries more willing to stick together — and the behavior of Gradov’s tech genius, Arthur Hammond (Stephen Root), makes no sense whatsoever.

 

The usually enjoyable Carla Gugino, finally, is wasted in her under-written role as U.S. Vice President Elizabeth Kirk.

Heads of State doesn’t overstay its welcome ... but it definitely won’t linger long in anyone’s memory.