One other streaming motion film sure to be forgotten as quickly because it’s over, these contemplating watching Heads of State on Prime Video ought to rethink their choices. For a way more entertaining and higher-quality product throughout the filmmaking spectrum, these on the lookout for an action-thriller that threatens the U.S. President should board Air Power One ASAP.
The critically and commercially profitable movie pairs bona fide motion hero Harrison Ford with excellent German filmmaker Wolfgang Petersen, incomes $315 million worldwide and scoring two Oscar nominations. With Petersen’s passing in 2022 and present streaming motion pictures affected by low cost digital camerawork, spinoff tales, and formulaic plotting, Air Power One is a refreshing reminder of how enjoyable, exhilarating, and downright amusing motion motion pictures was once within the Nineties.
Why You Ought to Skip ‘Heads of State’
By director Ilya Naishuler (No person), Heads of State is a listless, tone-deaf motion comedy starring John Cena and Idris Elba. Cena performs The American President, and the previously well-known motion film star, Will Derringer. Elba performs the British Prime Minister and former particular forces commando, Sam Clarke. Though these two nationwide leaders don’t agree on a lot politically, they’re pressured to band collectively and thwart a lethal plot that goals to kill them each.
A typical buddy-action film that lives and dies with the palpable rapport between Elba and Cena, Heads of State is a slight time-killing diversion that, regardless of providing just a few laughs, brings nothing new in a long-trampled subgenre. Whether or not evoking White Home Down or Olympus Has Fallen, much more gifted and completed moviemakers like Roland Emmerich and Antoine Fuqua have coated related floor, with extra memorable outcomes, for greater than a decade. Even the unoriginal title refers to Chris Rock’s Head of State, revamped 20 years in the past.
Past the story’s spinoff nature, Heads of State tasks the identical flat, untextured visible aesthetic that many digitally shot motion pictures endure from. Within the quest for cost-effective, Extremely-Excessive Definition readability, Heads of State falls properly wanting basic 35mm celluloid prints shot on movie. A budget, monotonous visuals will remind viewers of the vitality of old-school motion pictures constructed on basic filmmaking strategies.
Outdoors of Elba and Cena’s exuberant chemistry, the movie struggles to satisfy its goals as a recent, authentic, and genuinely memorable motion film. A routine, paint-by-numbers affair that feels plotted by AI, motion film lovers have heard this track many occasions earlier than, typically with a extra assured tone, lasting and satisfying endurance. One wonderful instance is Wolfgang Petersen’s Air Power One, starring Harrison Ford within the prime of his motion film profession.
‘Air Power One’ Soars Over ‘Heads of State’
With a stellar assortment of expertise above and beneath the road, Air Power One flies far above Heads of State. Launched in 1997, the Wolfgang Petersen movie follows the American President, James Marshall (Harrison Ford), whose private/skilled plane, Air Power One, is overtaken by terrorists from Soviet-backed Kazakhstan.
When the hijackers demand that america free the imprisoned dictator of their nation, Normal Ivan Radek (Jürgen Prochnow), Marshall’s spouse, youngster, closest allies, and Secret Service members are brutally attacked on board whereas within the air. Together with his protectors dwindling by the minute, Marshall is pressured to combat again and commandeer the aircraft, and redirect its flight path in direction of security. As an alternative of self-preservation, Marshall heroically vows to maintain each harmless bystander on Air Power One alive and freed from hurt, battering and taking pictures his manner by a throng of Russian villains.
The movie ramps up right into a fast-flying car for Harrison Ford to flex his motion muscle tissue and ship one other plausible efficiency. These watching the film really feel secure figuring out Ford is answerable for the nation, figuring out deep down that he is not going to falter. In contrast to Heads of States, which strains credulity at each flip, Air Power One doesn’t insult the viewers’s intelligence in its quest for old style escapism. Quite the opposite, the plot is rife with fascinating geopolitical subtext that glues the thrilling motion collectively.
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Though the supporting solid in Heads of State ranks among the many film’s robust fits, it can also’t compete with Air Power One‘s excellent ensemble. Past Ford and Prochnow, everybody from Gary Oldman, William H. Macy, and Glenn Near Dean Stockwell, Phillip Baker Corridor, and Paul Guilfoyle lend super performances within the movie, grounding the high-flying motion in rooted actuality. Oldman is especially efficient because the terrifying ring-leader, Egor Korshunov.
Previous the chic solid, Wolfgang Petersen as soon as once more proves his mastery of huge, daring, breathless motion set-pieces. One of many wisest strikes he made on Air Power One was to rent the good cinematographer Michael Ballhaus (Goodfellas, Gangs of New York), who frames the onboard motion with such harrowing stress and claustrophobia that it evokes Petersen’s tour-de-force German submarine film Das Boot. Embody one other exquisitely moody rating by the legendary Jerry Goldsmith (who changed Randy Newman on the final minute), and Air Power One rounds out a genuinely transferring cinematic expertise that almost all streaming motion pictures grossly lack, together with Heads of State.
How A lot Did ‘Air Power One’ Gross, Adjusted for Inflation?
Air Power One was made for $85 million, which, adjusted for inflation, equals roughly $170 million in 2025 (the value of High Gun: Maverick). Upon launch on July 25, 1997, Air Power One grew to become a monstrous summer season blockbuster en path to changing into the fifth highest-grossing film of the yr. Air Power One grossed a staggering $315 million in world ticket gross sales (through Field Workplace Mojo), which equals roughly $621 million when adjusted for inflation in 2025. Air Power One is the third highest-grossing film of Petersen’s profession, behind Troy and The Excellent Storm.
Though Air Power One was financially profitable, it was overshadowed by Titanic just a few months later when it misplaced the Academy Awards for Finest Sound and Finest Movie Modifying to the James Cameron basic. But, earlier than Titanic was launched in December, Air Power One dominated the summer season field workplace. Coupled with important acclaim that famous the trenchant commentary on post-Chilly Warfare international relations, Air Power One struck the right stability of hardcore motion escapism and political intrigue.
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The easy reality is that, in 1997, Hollywood was far totally different from what it’s these days. In 2025, streamers personal the day, with studios which are too large to fail producing unoriginal, risk-averse remakes, sequels, and spinoff rehashes. Whereas it is exhausting to say if Wolfgang Petersen would thrive on this present filmmaking local weather, Air Power One flies leaps and bounds above the run-of-the-mill factory-line merchandise like Heads of State.
Though the legendary Wolfgang Petersen handed away in 2022, Air Power One ranks among the many prime of his lasting cinematic legacy. These on the fence about watching Heads of State on Prime Video should skip and head over to PlutoTV to catch Air Power One earlier than it takes off for an additional streamer. Air Power One is out there to stream on PlutoTV.