Will Derringer (John Cena) is the new US President, and relations with his British counterpart, Sam Clarke (Idris Elba), are fraught. To improve relations, the two of them leave the UK together on Air Force One, which is then shot down by Russian arms dealer Viktor Gratov (Paddy Considine). The two heads of state survive the crash and must work together to return to safety, with the help of MI5 agent Noelle Bisset (Priyanka Chopra).

Heads of State is such a mixed bag of great moments and awful moments. There are times when you can’t help but smile at the witty banter between the two leads, but then other times when the film is trying to force some horrendous exposition down your throat that you can’t help but grimace. From a script perspective, it certainly leaves a lot to be desired; the story is very loose, and the characters are all underdeveloped, most notably Considine’s villain Gratov. Probably one of the worst-written villains of all time, he doesn’t seem to have any motivation other than power and a longing to break NATO up, but with no end goal. It’s easy to feel sorry for the actor, as he’s given nothing to create a proper character, and you get the feeling that many of his speaking scenes were left on the cutting room floor.

Cena and Elba are both excellent; the film effectively leans into Cena’s puppy dog personality, where he always just wanted to please and impress, whilst Elba’s character leans into that British nihilism, where we don’t want to feel emotions or care about how others think of us. This film inhabits the post-Trump universe we live in, where a movie star could become the most powerful man in the world, but it poses the question: What if we had a Trump-like figure with a heart and a conscience? All very fantasy, I know, since on the UK part, the film creates a fantasy that we have a Prime Minister who cares about people and wants active change. The banter between these two actors is what makes Heads of State so watchable; they have great chemistry, and the moments of humour together often work. They do feel like two capital M Movie Stars here, and it’s nice that Amazon still makes mid-budget action-comedies that we are sorely missing— I just wish it were a theatrical release.

The director, Ilya Naishuller, is a Russian filmmaker who has created two solid action films, Hardcore Henry and Nobody. Two films that had a lower quality of script but made up for it in terrific action sequences, this is something that carries over to Heads of State. Naishuller is a good action director; there is one specific scene with Jack Quaid that utterly steals the movie. The choices of cinematography and the blocking of the action were superb, and you just wish all the non-action parts of the film were as good. One surprising thing is how anti-Russia and pro-NATO this film is, since it comes from a director who is the son of an oligarch. The film bends over backwards in a very American way to make sure that these two heads of state are the saviours of Europe from this Russian meddler.

Overall, when Heads of State gets going, it’s a hard movie to hate. The action is thrilling, and the lead actors are great. I just wish the script were on the same level, and we could have gotten a new classic buddy-action film for the ages.