When I sat down to watch Amazon’s new big-budget action comedy, I was already having a rough day. Like “dog crapped on the kitchen floor” levels of over it. So I was less than enthused to spend the rest of my morning watching some generic, patriotic shoot-em-up starring actors I otherwise enjoy and wish better things for. And to be clear, Heads of State absolutely is generic. The plot is obvious, and you’ll see the twists coming a mile away. It is exactly the movie you’re expecting, only … better. So much better! It’s everything an Amazon original should be: A budget spent on flawlessly executing a fun, mass-audience-appealing premise, with explosions.
As you could tell from the trailer, John Cena plays Will Derringer, the President of the United States, and Idris Elba plays Sam Clarke, the British Prime Minister. They do not get along; Derringer is a Hollywood action star with no public service record who coasted into the Oval Office on charisma, and Clarke is the pessimistic, no-nonsense former military man (who didn’t see battle) who can’t take that cheery Yank seriously. Oil and water meets flame when Air Force One is shot down while both men are onboard. The world thinks they’re dead, and with a NATO summit kicking off in Italy, they have to work together to survive and get to the bottom of the attack before the alliance of nations splits apart.
Yup, the mission is “Save NATO” and it’s just clever enough to rise above the bog-standard affair you’re envisioning, while still being sufficiently nonsensical. A Russian arms dealer, played by Paddy Considine (!), has an axe to grind with both the US and the UK, but he’s also working with a political insider to destabilize international relations. This involves hacking into a classified global surveillance system and releasing state secrets that reveal NATO allies are, I dunno, backstabbing each other? So Clarke and Derringer dodge Russian assassins while trotting across Europe to reach the summit, and they find a way to put aside their differences and work together just like NATO needs to, and…
Look, forget what the movie is about. It doesn’t matter, and that’s the charm. With this kind of movie, it never matters. So let’s talk about why you should watch it anyway:
The Cast
Idris Elba, John Cena, and Paddy Considine (!!!) are all operating fully within their lanes and should be enough reason to watch, while Priyanka Chopra Jonas, as a secret agent with ties to Sam, is another rock-solid addition. People seem to feel all kinds of ways about her, and though I didn’t watch her other Amazon joint, Citadel, I gotta admit I like her in this kind of role. She’s got a sort of Kirkland Signature Ana de Armas thing going on, which is far more interesting than your typical arm candy. Just let her punch people, god!
But there must be some secret special discount if any given actor appears for less than five minutes of screentime total, because otherwise I can’t explain the delightful, if bafflingly short, appearances of Sharlto Copley, Stephen Root, Sarah Niles, Carla Gugino, Richard Coyle, and the man of the moment himself, Jack Quaid. By the time Quaid turns up for the best scene of the movie, I didn’t even care that his appearance was short-lived. I was too busy cackling and clapping my hands like a goddamn monkey.
The Action
Aside from the killer cast, most of the reason Heads of State is better than average is thanks to its better-than-average director, Ilya Naishuller. The man behind Nobody and the brilliant Hardcore Henry has the action chops to make this a thrilling and inventive ride, but he also grounds the insane action in the characters, rather than the actors. The joke is that Derringer and Clarke are capable-ish, but are not the action heroes of the movie. Their bacon is saved by hilarious luck and the help of their agents time and time again. Chopra Jonas is the real action hero, which is a pleasant riff and she rises to the occasion well. And again, for a single scene, Jack Quaid is the baddest MF-er in the room, destroying a mini-army of assassins by shooting them through the freaking walls.
It’s Not That Patriotic After All
You’ll be happy to know that a lot of the humor is spent deflating the Actor In Chief, but you may be surprised to learn that the big bad of the movie is actually American isolationism. And that’s all I’ll say about that.
So just shut up and watch the movie. And stay tuned for the mid-credit sequence because it’s the perfect cherry on top of the whole thing.
Heads of State is streaming now on Prime Video
