Henry O'Brien
Last week, US President Donald Trump seemed to commit to collective defense between his home country and the fellow members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Trump’s commitment feels like a step down from his repeated threats to leave NATO, although one can never truly know with his penchant for unpredictability.
Trump’s aggressive posturing toward NATO in both his first and second terms in office has created an extended period of precarity at the global stage. At a moment like this, how are the artists interpreting such a time? Well, look toward Amazon MGM Studios and find the buddy comedy, Heads of State, director Ilya Naishuller’s follow up to Nobody which stars John Cena and Idris Elba as the U.S. President Will Derringer and prime minister Sam Clarke, respectively (technically, the prime minister is not the head of state in the U.K., the monarch is; a fact pointed out in the movie as a joke but never really expanded upon).
The film, a by-the-numbers buddy road comedy a la Midnight Run with a global conspiracy to boot, follows the two leaders as they set aside their personal rivalry (Clarke didn’t endorse Derringer apparently) to stop the disbandment of NATO. Cena and Elba take on folks from the inside of their governments and a global terrorist (Paddy Considine). The film has sparks but never really stands out, aside from the characters telling you how capital I important NATO is.
Heads of State is part of a recent line of mediocre action/action comedies from Amazon MGM like 2024’s Road House remake, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and Jackpot!. Nothing about these movies aims to reinvent the genre. But they can honestly serve as a decent watch on a plane ride or when folks need background noise to do chores like laundry (cinema is doing just fine, trust me).
To the film’s credit, though, Cena and Elba together make any film a tad more entertaining, if only slightly. The duo’s chemistry on James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad was one of the film’s many highlights. In Heads of State, the two are on icy grounds at first, especially at the early NATO meetings, but soon make up and share plenty of gags and laughs together.
Cena, in an honest-to-god moment of introspection, plays with his own stardom. When Elba’s character criticizes President Cena for being an action movie star first, politician second, Cena’s character claps back with how the universe fated him to hold a gun in his hand because he looks cool. Cena has never been afraid to talk about masculinity, and this joke served as another example of Cena poking fun at his persona. Elba, meanwhile, once again plays comedy style well — providing a good balance between condescension and anger.
Aside from the two stars and a delightful five-minute cameo from Jack Quaid, nothing about Heads of State particularly stands out. There’s a forced relationship between Elba’s character and MI6 agent Noel Bisset (Priyanka Chopra). Considine’s character is a villain with a vaguely described, yet supremely vengeful, beef with British intelligence. The conspiracy that Derringer and Clarke uncover isn’t terribly complex, and the reasons for it are roughly paleoconservative in nature (the conspirators argue that the United States gives up too much to its weaker NATO allies).
The movie doesn’t get too deep into the politics of the story, but it still does make an earnest effort to describe the benefits of collaboration between America and its European allies. Cena makes a grand speech toward the end of the action, where he describes in limited detail how NATO is what the world needs right now.
Heads of State feels as though Amazon, a known collaborator with NATO, asked for a movie where they show how much they care about international treaties and global affairs. It’s mindless entertainment that won’t change any minds, and it was never planned to. Take with that what you will.
