As an action-comedy, Heads Of State is more successful at the former than the latter. It’s a junky, diverting movie, one with major tonal issues and a completely predictable storyline, no matter how many twists and red herrings the filmmakers throw at us. Not sharp enough to be memorable but just well-crafted enough that you wish everyone involved had tried a little harder, this Prime Video release serves a growing demographic of viewers who merely want their at-home entertainment to be slightly better than they were expecting. And maybe that audience will be satisfied: Populated by three appealing leads and featuring some fun set pieces, director Ilya Naishuller’s third flick is inoffensively competent. In our world of streaming cinema, that’s not bad, which is too bad.
Heads Of State, credited to three screenwriters, is a mash-up of the odd-couple comedy, the road-trip picture, and every single Air Force One ripoff. John Cena plays Will, the recently elected U.S. president who was previously a beloved action star. (His big franchise was the amusingly terrible-sounding Water Cobra.) Will is about to finally meet Sam (Idris Elba), the U.K. prime minister, who’s facing plummeting poll numbers in the sixth year of his term. There’s tension between them because Sam tacitly endorsed Will’s presidential opponent, but when they shake hands in London before holding a joint press conference, the hope is that they can present an image of solidarity. Alas, that plan goes awry, not very comedically. As with much of Heads Of State‘s humor, the potentially funny scene is strained, the two actors working their charm to only middling effect.
Despite Will and Sam’s animosity, they have to keep hanging out since they’re both heading to Italy for a crucial NATO summit. Their advisors suggest that taking Air Force One together would be good for optics, but it’s not long until these world leaders are ripping into one another at 40,000 feet. Will accuses Sam of being aloof and hostile, while Sam despises the idea that America picked a shallow movie star to be their president, again. They’re so much at each other’s throats that it’s inevitable that, at that very moment, everything goes wrong. Air Force One is attacked in midair by a mystery plane, while an assassin on board tries to kill Will and Sam. They barely escape thanks to two remaining parachutes, while everyone else dies in a fiery crash. Naturally, Will and Sam start bickering almost immediately afterward—because once dozens of innocent people perish, now’s the time for laughs.
Landing in Belarus, they go off the grid, the whole world assuming they died as well. Sam rightfully reasons that whoever’s behind the deadly ambush has infiltrated the nations’ security systems, so they ditch their smartphones and journey on foot to Italy to figure out who orchestrated the killings. Along the way, they run into Noel (Priyanka Chopra Jonas), an MI6 agent who is also presumed dead because of an earlier ambush in which many of her fellow agents were gunned down. These assassinations are connected, and now the three have to work together since they can’t trust anyone else. Oh, and Sam and Noel used to date and still have feelings for one another.
With Paddy Considine tasked with the thankless job of portraying a blandly evil arms dealer, Heads Of State wants to keep us guessing about who on the inside sold out Will and Sam, but most viewers will be able to figure it out rather easily. Then again, Naishuller isn’t going for inventive or shocking—he wants to soothe his audience with familiar genres and pleasingly uncomplicated conflicts. Cena and Elba spend much of the film verbally jousting, and while their jibes are spirited, they’re not particularly hilarious. They’re mostly just there, a lukewarm condition that applies to much of Heads Of State, which occasionally tries to say meaningful things about international cooperation and the differences between action-movie heroism and real-world bravery. Cena and Elba bring enough sincerity that you might almost be fooled into investing in those heartfelt moments. But this is a movie that careens tonally from scene to scene, awkwardly juxtaposing the somber Air Force One sequence with goofy slapstick and rom-com silliness. Nothing really matters—not human life, not a sense of a larger world—just so long as Naishuller keeps hurtling forward.
It’s a job he’s fairly good at. Naishuller’s first two films were the first-person-POV action movie Hardcore Henry and the John Wick-ian Bob Odenkirk vehicle Nobody. Neither was great, but there was a grubby integrity to their graphic, R-rated escapism. With Heads Of State, which is rated PG-13, Naishuller still amasses a formidable body count, but the literally bloodless action sequences rob the violence of some of its naughty fun, especially because the movie is funniest when the director finds entertainingly gruesome ways for the bad guys to eat it. This makes Naishuller three-for-three in terms of his films only really coming to life when people are kicking, shooting, and stabbing one another—when his characters have to bond, flirt, or be vulnerable, he freezes up. Thankfully, the final third of Heads Of State is mostly given over to exuberant carnage, which almost helps paper over what’s otherwise lacking.
At this stage of Cena’s Hollywood career, it’s no surprise that he’s endearing as a well-meaning but out-of-his-depth politician. (Will had never run for anything until he became president.) This former action titan may be naïve, but he’s not a dummy or a jerk, and Cena locates the sweetness inside a guy who too often thinks of life like a Rambo movie. But for the umpteenth time, Cena is in a film that doesn’t push him, which is starting to feel less like missed opportunities and, instead, maybe a bit of coasting on his part. He and Elba are enjoyable together on screen—and Chopra Jonas acquits herself nicely as the film’s true action star—but then you remember that, not long ago, these two actors shared the screen in The Suicide Squad, a far better, nervier, bloodier, emotional action film. It was a ton funnier, too.
Director: Ilya Naishuller
Writers: Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec, Harrison Query
Starring: Idris Elba, John Cena, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Carla Gugino, Jack Quaid, Stephen Root, Paddy Considine
Release Date: July 2, 2025 (Prime Video)
