The film library of the streaming service Amazon has recently been supplemented with the adventurous road movie “Heads of State” by Ilya Naishuller featuring John Cena and Idris Elba. We tell you how a Russian director with varying success conquers t...

Buñol, Spain, present day or the near future. A joint MI6 and CIA team is conducting a special operation, investigating the case of Russian arms baron Viktor Gradov (too bad it’s not Yuri Orlov). A routine mission ends with the agents eliminated and the global surveillance program “ECHELON” captured.

While British subjects and American citizens are losing their lives, UK Prime Minister Sam Clark receives the newly elected US President Will Derringer with honors and barely concealed irritation. After demonstrating a “high” level of debate at a joint press conference, the embittered politicians board Air Force One: they are rushing to a NATO meeting in Trieste. However, Gradov’s men bypass the air defense system and shoot down the airborne “chariot” somewhere over the dense forests of Belarus.

From that moment on, Minister Clark and President Derringer are listed as missing, thus losing their status and powers. They are now just Sam and Will, Cat and Dog, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Starsky and Hutch, in other words, reluctant comrades or buddy-movie heroes.

President Will, a Hollywood sex symbol and legend of the action franchise “Water Cobra” with record approval ratings, and Minister Sam, a Machiavellian politician with a stale seven-year mandate, are forced to travel from Eastern Europe to Italy by plane, train, and car, like the iconic losers of John Hughes.

“Made in Russia”

The glossy charisma of John Cena, honing his image before filming new episodes of “Peacemaker,” and the phlegmatic Cartesian charm of Idris Elba are already enough to call the comedy tolerable, yet the film doesn’t stop at the title names and throws a bunch of random and not-so-random passengers into the geopolitical typhoon. Here we should thank Naishuller for an outright sublimation of the “Russian” (and not only) theme in American cinema. Nuclear weapons, Belarusian rednecks, hardbass compositions under the code names “Cyka” and “Zavod,” and, of course, the appearance of Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė as a silent farmer woman.

Perhaps it is this cranberry-strewn touch from a bearer of the cultural traditions of our vast country that makes the film so fresh and noticeable. Except for the perpetually tearful Alexander Kuznetsov (Gradov’s henchman), who inspires no delight either in acting skill or combat prowess. His stiff limbs refuse to learn decorative acrobatics, which contrasts unfavorably with the plasticity of on-screen sparring partner Priyanka Chopra. It’s strange that Ilya Naishuller did not adapt his compatriot for the action segments, having experience working with the wooden Bob Odenkirk, but you quickly forget this if you are charmed by the distinctive direction.

The director of “Hardcore Henry” can no longer gush with relentless pace and variety of technical tricks, nor try to surprise every second, because a film with John Cena needs John Cena, not his right heel, left shoulder, and first-person view. However, Naishuller’s fans will be repaid with reciprocal love by a random reference to the video “Voyage” or the madness of the director’s first feature film.

Satirical Populism

In the search for the author’s vein amid a company of rowdy guides, it is easy for the viewer to forget that “Heads of State” actually wants to talk about politics as well, and from the title at that. Therefore, Clark and Derringer are saving not only their own shiny heels but also the North Atlantic Alliance, aka NATO.

While the national heroes battle the local thugs for the chance to master the delights of the Moskvich-407 car, they are already being replaced by an interim government that cannot and does not want to ensure the security of the military-political bloc. The situation is exacerbated by the leak of data from the “ECHELON” program: it turns out that friendly countries have been conducting mutual sabotage, rigging elections, and eliminating unwanted politicians.

“Heads of State” is satire of the “everyone’s going to get it” variety, and that’s not bad when the goal is to mock and slap all sides of the conflict. But the film, unfortunately, has completely different priorities. Despite its helplessness and chaotic structure, NATO must live—so the screenwriters decided, and it is this outcome that allows the heroes to most effectively spite the villains. But what’s the point?

Within the film’s narrative strategy, NATO’s existence is necessary to maintain world order in the face of a global threat, but what is that threat? Viktor Gradov does not act on behalf of an abstract Russian Federation, Belarus, or other phantom superpower rivals—he is just a terrorist driven by revenge for his son’s death from an American missile. Therefore, with his death, any threat ceases to be relevant, which again raises the already chewed-over question.

On top of everything, “Heads of State” completely ignores real arguments for the US withdrawal from the North Atlantic bloc, leaving everything to cheap populism and anti-Trump rhetoric. Moreover, if Gradov’s motives, so to speak, the summarizing part, are padded with a plush layer of nobility and family drama, then the behavior and moral character of the supporters of the American “Brexit” simply cannot be interpreted in a positive or even neutral light: they are all scoundrels who do not admire the sight of John Cena’s character’s muscles and his equally impressive managerial skills.

So it turns out that “Heads of State” is fun, creative, and professional, but manipulative, bland, and one-sided. Ilya Naishuller is still a huge talent and a “magic key” to the production secrets of genre cinema. Two hours in his company is by no means a routine viewing, but a genuine simple pleasure. It’s a pity that the text thrown into his workshop is of ambiguous content, where everything is successful except the most essential.

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