Heads of State

Former action movie star turned U.S. President Will Derringer and British Prime Minister Sam Clarke may both be leaders of the free world, but they’re not BFFs (Best Friends Forever). But when a terrorist attack causes Air Force One to crash, these two frenemies must not only learn to work together if they want to survive, and save freedom, but that they have much more in common than they thought, and along the way, they both discover a little bit about themselves…

And each other.

I swear, this is a real movie.

Much like Fountain of Youth, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, The Electric State, Road House, Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire, and Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver, Heads of State is yet another one of these clearly expensive action and/or comedy original IP “blockbuster” films that bloom, fade, and then quickly die on one streaming service or another, otherwise known as the kind of film whiny losers claim that we’ve lost due to the proliferation of comic book movies.

I honestly don’t know who wants these movies.

Or why they would want them. Or how professionals could look at them, at any point in their development, especially given that these films are all going straight to streaming, but even if they weren't, how anyone could look at these films as they are being made and somehow think they’re a good idea. I don't know how these people, supposed entertainment professionals, are unable to see that these films are all really dumb ideas, and poorly executed ones too... I just don’t get it. Is The Studio really that accurate? Someone has to be aware that this is shit the entire time, right? Do they just not have power? Are they afraid to speak up? I mean, you watch the trailer for Heads of State and the only possible takeaway is... "Wow, that looks stupid." How do they not see this from the very start? It's a film about the U.S. President and the British Prime Minister wackily fighting terrorists! That's not a good idea! Maybe they just don’t care. I don’t know. Maybe it's just too far along and no one wants to be the one to admit that they all made a bad decision first? But then the original question remains... how did it even get to that point? How did it even get out of the starting blocks?

What kind of terrifying Svengali Rasputin motherfucker walked into the Amazon MGM Studios office with this dumb fucking idea, and then walked out again with a green-lit project and 70 million dollars?

I can only assume that these films exist due to a toxic stew of dumb people’s massive egos, of out-of-touch executives wielding their power because they can, of contractual obligations that must be fulfilled, or maybe IP maintenance concerns, perhaps more than a little money laundering as well, probably boredom too, not to mention the need to be seen by the rest of the Industry as being busy with a big project, I suppose, and of course, shockingly terrible taste, obviously. When you hear people talking about the broken Hollywood system, know that they're talking about movies like Heads of State, movies that no one asked for, or wanted, and cost way more than they will ever be worth, but they made it anyway, because what else are they going to do... NOT make it?

And as inexplicable as its very existence, not to mention its obvious high budget, Heads of State is a cornucopia of known names and locations. It stars John Cena, Idris Elba, Priyanka Chopra, Jack Quaid, Sarah Niles, Paddy Constantine, Stephen Root, Carla Gugino, and even Sharlto Copley, all while hopping across the face of the wide wide world, from Spain, to England, to Belarus, to Poland, to Croatia, to somewhere in Austria, and of course, to the City of Coffee itself, Trieste.

Which, admittedly, is the entire reason that I watched this film. As I’m sure most of you are aware by now, I was recently in Trieste. It was not only lovely, but it is also very distinctive, so I recognized it immediately. “Hey! I’ve been there!” I said, when I watched the trailer, so I watched the film. That’s it. That’s all it took. So that part was fun. Fun-ish, at least.

Also, it was free to watch, so fuck it.

But all that having been said...

While I wasn’t in Trieste very long, I was there long enough to know that the geography of the chase scene, as well as the way they used the locations, was all complete nonsense. Just complete nonsense, as they barreled from unconnected street to unconnected street, and between neighborhoods that are not next to each other, when they weren’t just driving in a circle. Plus, the film didn’t even use two of the city’s potentially most intriguing locations…

Anyway... the film:

So, after a joint team of MI6 agents and CIA officers, led by senior agent Noelle Bisset, are wiped out during the La Tomatina festival, where the blood is hidden by the tomatoes, Russian arms dealer Viktor Gradov obtains an important McGuffin.

Even worse, despite being very pretty, Noelle may dead…

Meanwhile, Sam Clarke, Prime Minister of Britain, and former action movie star, now newly elected United States President, Will Derringer, are getting together for a Heads of State Play Date. This was set up by their respective nations, because the heads of these two ally nations don’t get along, not since Sam had fish and chips with Will’s opponent back during the campaign.

In an effort to mollify the pair of world leaders’ ruffled feathers, their respective aides suggest that Sam and Will hang out together, while Sam hitches a ride with Will on Air Force One, when they head to the big NATO summit being held in Trieste, Italy.

Unfortunately, Gradov's terrorists have infiltrated Air Force One by posing as the wait staff, because the ruling elites never actually look at the help. Then they even manage to shoot Air Force One down, and all with ridiculous ease too. So much for American exceptionalism. This is probably for the best though, because the Trieste airport is too small for planes of that size.

Sam and Will manage to parachute to safety in Belarus, but the rest of the world assumes that they're dead. Realizing that someone in their inner circles must have betrayed them to Gradov, the two men ditch their phones and manage to make it to a CIA safe house in Poland. Unfortunately, they are found by Gradov’s assassins. Sam and Will only manage to escape when Noelle Bisset, who is both still really pretty and also still alive, shows up.

It turns out, this has been Gradov’s plan all along… Take out the President of the United States, so that when the Vice President is sworn in, and the continuity of government protocols switch over, Gradov can then use a “hacker” to seize control of the American-run world-wide surveillance program known as Echelon, which is used to do all sorts of bad stuff, which Gradov intends to keep doing. And as for England, much like with the current state of the world, it is also there.

Plus, Gradov hates Sam and Will for the usual reasons due to American foreign policy that you can probably guess.

It also turns out that Sam and Noelle were once in a pretty hot and heavy relationship, but then their careers got in the way, and while it’s obvious that the characters are still in love with each other, at no point do we get to see Priyanka Chopra and Idris Elba nude, in a carefully covered-up PG-13 kind of way, while performatively dry-humping to some R&B slow jams–preferably “Pony” by Ginuwine, in my opinion–so thumbs down on that shit.

Avoiding Gradov’s assassins in Austria, and also Croatia, because these three are phenomenally terrible at hiding, the President and the Prime Minister try to find out who betrayed them. But just as they finally find evidence, Sam is “seemingly” killed in an explosion, and Will and Noelle are briefly sad.

Will and Noelle finally arrive in Trieste, where they finally learn the identity of the traitor, well after any audience member who is even half-paying attention did, and are almost killed for their lack of quicker insight. But as they careen wildly through the streets of Trieste in the President’s limo, chased by Gradov’s assassins, they are saved by Sam, who (SPOILER) isn’t dead. He not only managed to survive, but to also steal a firetruck, that he then crashes in slow motion as he leaps into the limo, so that the trio can continue to race through the streets of Trieste (most of which are actually pedestrian only streets) reunited, and it feels so good.

Once inside the summit, Will and Sam give the gathered world leaders an inspiring pep talk, thus saving NATO.

But then Gradov and his assassins shows up, guns a’blazing.

After that, it’s up to Sam and Will, and also Noelle, in her heeled boots and low-cut tank top, to show these violent terrorists what real terroristic violence looks like, as two former colonialist world powers, one whose sun has set, and one whose sun is setting, to blow some shit up, break a bunch of shit, and spill a whole lot of blood.

Two months later, Sam and Will are now BFFs for real, and enjoy fish and chips together, even though one claims malt vinegar is the best topping, and the other claims that ketchup is, which is a metaphor for how both England and the U.S. are both fucked up, weird, and often wrong, especially the U.S., because ketchup on fish is the type of thing a person should end up in the Hague over, if we still tried people for crimes against Humanity, that is.

Anyway, the correct answer is Curry Sauce or Chippy Sauce.

Then, in a post-credits scene, the film does a “Nick Fury showing up at the end of Iron Man” kind of thing, seemingly implying that there’s a possible future spin-off franchise with Noelle running a team of agents, which again... who asked for that? I don’t know. Maybe it was just a chance to have Jack Quaid show up again.

Perhaps it’s unfair to call this film ridiculous fluff, but this film is ridiculous fluff, and that makes it hard to have a critical response to it. I mean, the basic question: “Is this film good?” just seems insane. Obviously not. It’s obviously bad. It’s about the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Britain teaming up to fight terrorists. There’s no way that idea will be “good.” It’s dumb. At best, it might be silly. It might be fun. It might be funny. It might have some good action. But no matter what, it’s gonna be bad and dumb, which Heads of State certainly is.

Bad news for Heads of State, it’s also not fun, or funny, at least, not in any way that’s really worth noting. It’s also weirdly paced. Each new location/scene seems incomplete, and strangely rushed, not to mention arbitrary, almost like they only went to so many different locations simply because they had the money, so why not spend it? The whole narrative order of events seems like half-baked vignettes floating in sequence, with only the barest of connections to the previous scene and the one following after.

Worst of all, the action is terrible.

Like, what other reason is there to watch this film, if not the action? Blow some shit up. Jump a car. Hang off a helicopter. Fight a bad guy over a parachute while you’re both in mid-air. Make it practical. Let the stunt people go nuts. Pretend like it’s a Tom Cruise movie, for God's sake, push the envelope.

But… nope.

It’s all very ho-hum. The director is Ilya Naishuller, and they also directed Hardcore Henry and Nobody. I didn’t really like either of those films for various reasons, but one thing you can definitely say for both of them is that the action was kinetic. But here? It’s dull as shit. And weirdly, the needle drops seem randomly chosen, like afterthoughts completely divorced from the story and the action. But again… this shouldn’t surprise anyone. Who the fuck would see the poster for this film, and then be shocked that it’s bad? I mean, besides Amazon MGM studio executives, of course.

I will say this for the film, there is a fun recap trick they do that I enjoyed, so there’s that at least.

In the end, the simple truth is this... good or bad, it’s just hard to root for any character these days that is an actor turned president (may Reagan burn in hell forever and ever and ever, along with everyone who voted for him), and in a world where Trump and overt white nationalist fascism is currently tearing the country to shreds, all with the exuberant approval of the overwhelming majority of white Americans, it’s honestly hard to root for any of this film’s rah rah good government bullshit. The fact that the heroes are all irredeemable villains in real life is just too hard to ignore, and doing so just feels too much like laughing politely during your own dismemberment, which means that the film is either rooted in a naive point of view, which is then being presented to you by a dumb person, or it's an insanely cynical and coldly calculating film that is meant to suck money from the kind of slope-foreheaded mouth-breather who regularly gets up in the morning, kisses a picture of Trump, and then immediately dons an red, white, and blue, eagle-and-American-flag headkerchief.

So, this isn’t a film that I would recommend for any reason.

If you really want to see Cena and Elba together that badly, which I get, because they’re great together, then you should watch The Suicide Squad instead, which is a much better film.