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The first hint that the new Amazon Prime movie Heads of State is going to be more than unusually dopey is the title. It’s meant to refer to the two protagonists, the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Britain. Of course, while the former is indeed head of state, the latter isn’t. Halfway through the movie, as if to signal the filmmakers’ awareness that the title is technically incorrect, a supporting character remarks that the UK’s PM is “the only head of state who isn’t really a head of state.” What? No, like the prime ministers of the Netherlands, Spain, and a number of other constitutional monarchies, he’s not a head of state in any sense of the term — he’s a head of government, period.

Okay, enough about the title (which, by the way, hasn’t kept this picture from becoming #1 on streaming services). On to our heroes. President Will Derringer, a dimbulb who went to the White House after several years as a Hollywood action star, is apparently intended to be a cross between Arnold Schwarzenegger and a younger Ronald Reagan, plus a big dollop of Trump. He’s played by the square-jawed John Cena, who in real life is a former champion wrestler turned star of movies (The Marine, Trainwreck) and TV (Peacemaker). The PM, Sam Clarke, is supposed to be a lot smarter than Derringer, and unlike the Prez, who has been a soldier in movies, he’s really served in the Army. He’s played by Idris Elba, star of the TV series The Wire and of six Marvel comic movies in which he portrayed a character called Heimdall.

All of this information about Cena and Elba, I should mention by way of full disclosure, is entirely new to me: before seeing Heads of State I was just barely familiar with these two actors’ names, and could not have picked either of them out of a lineup. To be sure, Cena did make it briefly onto my radar four years ago when his statement to Taiwanese media that Taiwan would be “the first country” to see his film Fast and Furious 9 outraged China, which denies Taiwan’s status as a separate country, and led Cena to issue a groveling apology, in Mandarin to boot: “I made a mistake. I must say right now. It’s so so so so so so important, I love and respect Chinese people. I am very sorry for my mistakes. Sorry. Sorry. I am really sorry. You have to understand that I love and respect China and Chinese people.”

Pathetic. But back to Heads of State. A plot summary: after a joint MI6-CIA operation in Spain is spectacularly sabotaged by bad guys, the Prez and PM decide to make a public demonstration of solidarity. They board Air Force One, and for the next few minutes the movie becomes a slapdash rip-off of (what else?) Air Force One, complete with an onboard traitor and an attack by other planes; the Prez and PM parachute to safety just before the plane crashes in rural Belarus. They immediately encounter a gaggle of bad guys, triumph over them in a cartoonish donnybrook involving such weapons as a hammer, a sickle, and a pitchfork, and are then driven by a sympathetic woman to a CIA safe house in Warsaw.

Alas, the safe house doesn’t remain safe for long. Suffice it to say that there’s plenty of gunfire, after which the Prez and PM — who have long since been presumed dead in the Air Force One crash — end up riding on a train across Austria, now accompanied by an MI6 agent (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) who proves to be one of those action-movie heroines who keep beating up men twice their size.

Later there’s a sequence involving a helicopter and lots of gunfire that brings to mind True Lies, a car chase in Trieste (also with plenty of gunfire) that recalls the car chase in Istanbul in Taken 2, and a terrorist attack on a NATO summit (sheer tons of gunfire) that makes the first act of London Has Fallen look like Tea and Sympathy.

Why all this running, chasing, violence? Turns out there’s a big international plot against both the Prez and PM — and NATO. Who’s behind it? Well. not the Chinese, of course — don’t want to get them angry again. And not any Islamic countries, either. Perish the thought!

No, the mastermind  — spoiler alert, sort of — turns out to be a highly-placed insider. And the Prez and PM, who at the beginning of the picture can’t stand each other, end up being (of course) buddies. Directed by a Russian named Ilya Naishuller, Heads of State is plainly supposed to be something of a comedy, with the humor theoretically originating from the tension between our two heroes (think 48 Hrs., Lethal Weapon, Die Hard), who keep hurling putdowns at each other.

Sorry, no sale. There’s not a laugh in this thing. Not to mention that it feels weirdly out of touch given what’s been going on during the last few years at the White House, at 10 Downing Street, and in the real world beyond.

Full confession: I actually gave up on Heads of State about a quarter of the way through. Then I noticed that Cena and Elba had just appeared on Jolly, one of my favorite YouTube podcasts, on which two likeable young British guys sample the grub at restaurants, diners, hotdog stands, pizzerias, barbecue joints, and other eateries, mostly in America.

On the episode with Cena and Elba, the two hosts and their guests shared a typical American breakfast in New York and a typical English breakfast in London. Elba actually was a no-show for the London half. But both Cena and Elba — especially Cena — were so off-the-cuff funny (Cena reacting to beans on toast: “1948, I get it. But 2025, why is this still a thing?”) that I decided to give Heads of State another chance, and hung in to the bitter end. (This was, note well, before I’d been reminded that Cena is a jerk.)

Alas, I’d been right to bail: the completely impromptu Jolly podcast — four (then three) guys tossing off unscripted quips about hash browns and pancakes and such — turned out to be far more entertaining than the movie, which is credited to three writers (Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec, and Harrison Query), involved location filming in several countries, and cost God only knows how much to put in the can (to say nothing of the promotional budget). Is there a lesson here? What do you think?

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