'Heads of State' is a buddy movie that is popcorn-ready for a great night in front of the telly. It's action all the way and a must-watch.
What happens when two heads of state, let’s say the President of the United States and the UK Prime Minister, become action heroes? Heads of State on Amazon Prime answers that question with a toe-curling weekend-watch movie that just keeps giving to its audience.
Heads of State is a buddy comedy along the same lines as the Lethal Weapon series, except of course, the heroes aren’t cops. They’re world leaders.
It stars Idris Elba as the UK prime minister, Clarke, with John Cena as the US president, Derringer. The latter, a la Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger, was voted into office as a Hollywood blockbuster actor, while Clarke had a traditional, up the ranks and somewhat sour career as a politician.
Clarke cannot stand Derringer’s swag, but circumstances turn them into best of friends at the end. And heroes.
The pair have a bitchy public fallout at a press conference, then to improve the optics, it’s suggested that they travel to a Nato conference together on Air Force One. It’s then that it all hits the fan, as a terrorist creates havoc on board Derringer’s state-of-the-art plane.
Air Force One is shot down, and the two leaders barely survive. They’re left to their own devices in Belarus, a forest crash sit, and the story shows them making their way back to Trieste in Italy, where the Nato get-together was to take place.
‘Heads of State’: Public fallout between UK and US leaders
Of course, the geo-political twist in the story is that nobody wants to be part of Nato anymore, and it’s only a handshake and friendship between the organisation’s leading nations, the US and the UK, that can avoid the alliance’s disintegration.
Rewind a bit to the beginning of the flick where a botched MI6 operation led by an agent called Noel (pronounced Noelle) and played with sniper-like confidence by Priyanka Chopra, was tied to a vengeful arms dealer, Viktor Gradov. He’s annoyed by the whole episode and wanted the two world leaders dead. Well, that and control of the global spying computer god-like software, called Echo.
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Noel disappears and returns in the middle of the movie to rescue Clarke and Derringer while they’re on their way to Trieste, guns blazing and shooting up buildings, assassins and so on. There’s another twist, of course, Noel and Clarke had a romance, kind of, during their time of paired service in the British military.
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It’s a fast-paced plot, with the evil genius behind it finally revealed. But you’ve got to keep up, because the sequence of events moves quickly. There’s no real moment of yawn throughout the entire film.
And who would have thought that Elba’s comic timing could be this good, or for that matter, the great acting by professional wrestler-cum-actor Cena? Chopra’s great as the heroine and her fighting scenes are well-coordinated and put together.
Top-shelf buddy flick
From the cinematography through to the performances, the plot and the direction, this is a buddy film that’s top shelf. It never pretends to be anything other than what it is and that makes it so much more enjoyable. It’s entertainment for the sake of entertainment, even though it tosses some political breadcrumbs in between.
If you’ve enjoyed bold action films like Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down, you’ll enjoy Heads of State even more. If you’ve seen neither of the aforementioned, it doesn’t matter, because this movie is a family-friendly action romp that’s popcorn-ready.
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