Ryan Reynolds made another movie where he plays a smug guy in a crisis, and this time Kenneth Branagh is along for the ride. Mayday, the new Cold War buddy action comedy from Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, has landed on Apple TV with a Rotten Tomatoes score that sits at a respectable but deeply confused 81 percent — which basically means critics agree it’s a movie that exists, and they’re still arguing about whether that’s a good thing.
Mayday follows Lieutenant Troy “Assassin” Kelly, a hotshot Navy pilot played by Reynolds, who gets shot down over Soviet airspace in 1987 and ends up stranded in the snowy wilderness with only an ex-KGB agent for company. That agent is Nikolai Ustinov, played by Branagh with a beard, a gruff demeanor, and an inexplicable obsession with Top Gun. Yes, the Tom Cruise movie. In 1987 Soviet Russia. Sure. Why not. Stranger things have happened in cinema, though not many.
The premise is objectively ridiculous, and the film knows it. Reynolds does his usual deadpan wisecrack routine while Branagh commits to the bit with the kind of theatrical gravitas that makes you wonder if he thinks he’s in a different movie entirely. Somehow, that mismatch works more often than it doesn’t. Variety called it a latter-day Top Gun riff with surprising heart, while The New York Times praised Reynolds’ gift for the understated one-liner and Branagh’s clear enjoyment of Nikolai’s very specific skill set.
Not everyone is convinced, though — some critics found the moral lessons about patriotism and fatherhood a little too simplistic, and one review generously described the film as “as short on laughs as it is long on total nonsense.” Ouch. Metacritic gave it a 60, which is the numerical equivalent of a shrug. A very polite, very British shrug. You can practically hear the tea kettle whistling in the background.
Mayday wants to be a plane-train-and-automobile chase flick with emotional depth, which is a lot to ask from a movie where the central friendship is built on one guy loving American pop culture while the other guy just wants to go home. But Reynolds and Branagh have genuine chemistry, the 1980s soundtrack slaps, and the action sequences are slick enough to keep you from checking your phone. Maria Bakalova and David Morse round out the supporting cast, doing their best with material that occasionally forgets they exist.
Principal photography took place in Montreal and Budapest under the working title Blackbird, which feels appropriate for a movie about a pilot who crashes. Is it a great movie? Probably not. Is it a fun way to spend two hours while your brain takes a well-deserved vacation? Absolutely. Mayday knows exactly what it is, and honestly? That’s refreshing in an era where every blockbuster thinks it needs to rewrite the concept of cinema. Sometimes you just want to watch two good actors banter while snow explodes behind them. There’s no shame in that. We all need a break from thinking too hard about anything at all.
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