Prime Time: Heads Of State (2025)

Although it is supposed to be an action comedy, I can honestly say that I never laughed once at Heads Of State. Seriously. I actually laughed more during a recent rewatch of Witness, the Harrison Ford thriller from 1985 that absolutely isn't a comedy (although there are a few deliberate lighter moments here and there).

John Cena plays Will Derringer, an action movie star who has managed to become the U.S. President. Idris Elba plays Sam Clarke, an ex-military man who has spent years serving as the British Prime Minister. The two of them are targeted by deadly killers, meaning they have to work together in order to survive. Just typing out this paragraph has made me sad.

It took three people to write this screenplay. Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec, and Harrison Query. All three should hang their heads in shame. There are a couple of decent flourishes in the action beats, but not one laugh. I like both of the leads, but I loathed both by the time I got to the end of this. Director Ilya Naishuller has helmed some good stuff in the past. This shows him to be lacking any knack for handling straightforward comedy though.

Aside from Elba and Cena, who are both at their absolute worst, the cast includes Priyanka Chopra Jones (equally ill-served), Paddy Considine (meant to be a Russian villain, but not sure what accent, if any, he was told to try), Carla Gugino (wasted), Stephen Root (wasted), Sarah Niles and Richard Coyle (both wasted), and Jack Quaid (who is one of the few highlights). There are others, mainly playing bland baddies to be despatched in one of the many fight sequences that blur together.

Everything about this is lazy and ugly. It's another streaming release that feels exactly like "content", put together by an algorithm with no way to insert a spark of proper life or humanity. Even some of the main locations have a familiarity to them, as if they're the same places used by Amazon for a few of their other big-budget projects.

I have watched, and will continue to watch, a lot of rubbish. Some of it is rubbish that I have a soft spot for. Some of it is rubbish that I enjoy as something to have on while I don't need to overthink or worry about (when I want familiarity, predictability, and a happy ending). This rubbish is the worst kind of rubbish. It's a film that many will settle for, considering how it does have that familiarity, predictability, and expected final scenes, but it treats viewers without an ounce of care or respect. The main premise is silly enough, but it's then made less bearable by the film-makers trying to keep the whole thing grounded in some kind of reality one step away from our own. 

2/10

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Nobody (2021)

When a family are terrified by a home invasion one night, and the youngest member of the family loses her favourite kitty bracelet, the man of the house, Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) decides to head out and get some revenge. This leads to him being on a bus at the same time as a group of assholes who are harassing a woman, and Mansell decides that he can take out his rage on this group. This gets him noticed by the wrong people, mainly the very powerful Yulian Kuznetsov (Aleksey Serebryakov), and that means that people start to realise his past life was spent being the last person that many people ever saw.

Pretty much sold to people as another John Wick kind of movie, but with "Saul Goodman" in the lead, Nobody will definitely please fans of that series. The fun comes from the fact that Wick reluctantly returned to his killing ways while Mansell is actually keen to let out some rage that has been kept locked away during years of a steady 9-5 grind (a dreary life of routine shown in a montage at the start of the film). The only reason he doesn't want to start back down that path is because he knows how much he's going to enjoy the journey, and he knows how good he is at killing people.

Written by Derek Kolstad, who wrote the first John Wick movie, this is a smart and funny action flick with some impressive violence in the fight scenes. It's hard not to feel a sense of glee as Mansell slides comfortably back into his former habits, and he makes great use of every environment around him to remove the advantage that his opponents usually think they have.

Director Ilya Naishuller is no stranger to this kind of thing, having started his directorial career with an impressive POV short  ("Bad Motherfucker" for Biting Elbows) that would lead to him helming Hardcore Henry. Although I couldn't get on board with that POV gimmick for a whole feature, Naishuller certainly showed that he was happy to revel in gunshots, bone-breaking melee fights, and the kind of forward momentum that should keep most action movie fans pleased.

Odenkirk is superb in the lead role here, believably strong without having bulked up to seem huge. A great actor in pretty much everything I've ever seen him in, it's great to see him have fun in a role that seems so far out of his wheelhouse. I really hope more people see this and become Odenkirk fans. Serebryakov is the standard big baddie, and is just fine in his role, overseeing an army of henchmen who will all likely fail in their attempts to kill Odenkirk's character. RZA has a small role, which he does just fine with, and Christopher Lloyd is a real treat, playing David Mansell (father of Hutch), someone with a similar past. Connie Nielsen is a very understanding wife, Michael Ironside has a small role as a boss/father-in-law, and Colin Salmon has a nice little moment as "The Barber".

All in all, this is everything you could want it to be. The action satisfies, the plotting is good enough to make it all seem plausible (within the movie world), and the sense of humour throughout makes it feel even more suited to Odenkirk having the lead role. Everybody should see Nobody.

9/10

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