Heads of State – Review

With over 140 thousand tons of overripened tomatoes, La Tomatina is reflected in a news report at the onset by Noel Bisset (Jonas) and her crew. So, who is this group of newsies and what are they really after? As they find their target in the crowd, the team turns to surveillance mode and tracks movement while trying to confirm via facial recognition.

The target slips through the crowd, nigh a tomato staining his white outfit. Eventually he reaches a VW T5 van, but things start to get wild as shots are fired. Uh oh. The field team has been setup!! Good thing your girl Noel is a bad ass and deals with the issues at hand with some supreme fury. As the event comes to a sudden conclusion, the original target, Viktor Gradov (Considine) looks on.

Later in London, Prime Minister Sam Clarke (Elba) wakes up to his singing phone and a TV report on U.S. President Will Derringer (Cena) who has just touched down locally. The big-time ex-actor Derringer is taking the nation by storm despite only being in office for five months. Clarke however does not dig his style as it is completely opposite to his own serious and methodical political approach.

So, what the hell does any of this have to do with the opening bloody and bullet-friendly shenanigans? Does it matter? We all sort of know that crap will go down, bad guys probably will do something dangerous and threatening, and that the offbeat pairing of the two world leaders is bound to happen, otherwise the title would be something else.

Idris Elba is always phenomenal, and he brings his usual cool and calm demeanor to this role offering strong presence and a good character take. John Cena can be pretty solid in his own right in the right role, and he is decent at the comedy elements despite that being a tough genre to conquer. Politics usually can be an easy background for jokes and/or satire, so adding a bit of over-the-top action and punchy dialogue fits alright.

As the two main characters have opposing character traits, the usual dilemmas are present during the setup, but eventually there is some decent chemistry, as also to be expected with a plot like this. The rest of the cast has some strong performances in their own right, and in general this film is fairly fun if you want a bit of fun action and don’t expect anything serious or realistic. What holds it back is that it does not stray too far from a typical ‘buddy’ formula, and the plot itself also has little innovation. Also, Idris Elba mispronounced nuclear, so, total bummer yo.

“It’s like I’m Dr. Dre and you’re Eminem and we’re taking that stage for the first time together.”