HEADS OF STATE - Mark Reviews Movies

Heads of State, Amazon MGM Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 1, 2025

The premise of Heads of State is wholly familiar, in that it's a comedic actioner about a pair of mismatched partners. The gimmick of the screenplay (by Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec, and Harrison Query), though, is pretty enticing, in that those incompatible partners are the leading political figures of two of the most powerful countries in the world. Neither of them has any business doing what the two have to do here, and as influential and dignified as these governmental positions are (or, until about eight years ago, used to be, in the case of one of them), that doesn't mean these characters are above petty squabbles over relatively insignificant matters.

Director Ilya Naishuller might be doing a bit more here than just highlighting how different the protagonists are and how much each irritates or frustrates the other. There's a mismatching of tones and stakes on display throughout the film, too, which makes it funnier than simply watching Idris Elba and John Cena butt heads and trade barbs as, respectively, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the President of the United States.

This is a plot that gets going with an attack on and the destruction of Air Force One, which is such a shocking thing to witness that every little argument and insult coming from those two characters afterwards seems even more trivial than they already are. It'd be easy to say that Naishuller's occasional tonal shifts to take in the dread and deadly severity of certain events in the story undercuts the film's comedy, but it's actually the opposite effect. Everything surrounding those moments of seriousness is so over-the-top that it's practically impossible to take anything within the film too seriously, so when the film itself does try to do so, it offers a jarring bit of perspective to just how funny and entertaining the rest of the material is.

All of this is only to say that the film is consistently amusing and exciting, because the filmmakers and cast know exactly what they're doing. It's not easy, for example, to take such a formulaic setup and find something distinct to do with that premise in the first place. The film is aware that it's going to get a lot of mileage out of putting two of the most powerful figures in the world into assorted peril, in the middle of action sequences in which they can barely achieve much at first, and, through it all, into so many outbursts of bickering, passive-aggressive jabs, and direct insults. The juxtaposition of position and behavior is, well, simply funny on its face.

Then, there's the casting, which only amplifies that dynamic. Elba plays it straight as Sam Clarke, the prime minister who takes his job seriously and is in the midst of a scandal that could put a quick end to his six-year tenure in the role, which means he feels even more obligated to do the job properly. Meanwhile, Cena plays Will Derringer, a seemingly unlikely president of, well, anything, let alone the world's largest superpower. Until winning election to the highest office in the land, Will was an actor mostly known for action movies, and perhaps rightly so, he's feeling like an impostor as president and desperately wants to be liked and respected.

The actual plot involves an arms dealer named Gradov (Paddy Considine), who has a professional and personal grudge against government, and his plan to kill the two men, overtake control of a massive global surveillance system, and use that tech to dismantle NATO. It's a lot, obviously, but that plotting is primarily an excuse to put Sam and Will into tricky situations—to say the least—and to keep them at odds against each other.

The setup works quite well on several major and minor levels. The two primary ones, of course, are the dynamic between the leads—both the characters and the actors, each of whom is good sport in the way he nudges his typical on-screen persona (although Cena is clearly having more fun, which makes for an even greater contrast to Elba's character and approach)—and the action itself. The attack on Air Force One, for example, is pure spectacle, with multiple levels of staging (a plane launching drones and hijackers inside the presidential aircraft) and some ingenuity (The plane drops, rolls, and becomes a kind of obstacle course of bad guys and fuselage breaches).

There are other nifty sequences that follow, including an assault on a safe house, in which the agent on assignment uses a security monitor to shoot through walls, and a chase through an Italian city, where an armored limousine takes all sorts of fire and those inside have to deal with the vehicle slowly but surely falling apart from the constant attacks. Almost as much fun is seeing who fills some supporting roles, such as Carla Gugino as the Vice President, Jack Quaid as that agent at the safe house, Stephen Root as Gradov's conscientious hacker, and, in a more significant part, Priyanka Chopra Jonas as Noel, an MI6 agent who arrives to help mediate both the mission and the world leaders' clash of personalities.

Heads of State does more than it seems, really, functioning in its action, in keeping its comedic beats from feeling repetitive, and as a sly bit of political allegory/satire (It's tough to separate the concept of the film's celebrity president from a certain someone, although the fictional character comprehending at least the basics of government is an obvious distinction). More importantly, the film accomplishes those things with skill and a genuine sense of fun.

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