OK, I know what you’re thinking. A direct to streaming action/comedy with Ryan Reynolds as the star? It’s hardly a badge of quality these days thanks to some of the other movies that recently been thrown up by an increasingly cynical algorithm. However, while we’d be wise to tread carefully when approaching Apple TV’s Mayday, it’s well worth noting that the Cold War set comedy action film comes with some interesting names attached.
Firstly, it boasts the directorial team of Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, who both gave us the awesome Game Night (still one of the best out and out comedies of the last ten years) and the criminally underseen Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (I still harbour a massive source of frustration that this never managed to conjure up a sequel). Secondly, we find none other than luvvie supreme, Kenneth Branagh indulging in an action movie – and yet another Russian accent – that doesn’t require him to actually play a villain. Colour me intrigued – especially if the colour happens to be Soviet red…
Troy “Assassin” Kelly is a fighter pilot for the US Navy in the year of 1987. The Cold War is still in effect despite the recent efforts of Mikhail Gorbachev to try and diffuse the tensions and as a result, Kelly is recruited by the CIA to ride shotgun on a reconnaissance mission involving flying a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird over Soviet airspace. Being something of a chatty, witty sort, Kelly finds that his sparkling wit has little effect on his pilot – and even less on the MiG that ultimately manages to shoot them down.
While Kelly lands hard, the Blackbird lands harder and after sustaining a wound to his leg in the fall, the pilot wakens to find himself in the remote home of carpenter named Nikolai Ustinov. The bad news is that despite his wounds being treated, Kelly is tied to the bed of a man who once was a member of the KGB, but the good news – such as it is – is that Ustinov has changed his ways and become something of a fan of the American way of life thanks to repeated viewings of his grainy, bootleg VHS of the movie, Top Gun. Excited that an actual American fighter pilot has literally dropped into his life, Nikolai wants to try and keep Kerry safe – but that’s going to be progressively hard to do with notorious Soviet hardliner Alexander Volkov hoping to use Kerry’s capture to derail Glasnost.
So it’s classic, odd couple, buddy movie shenanigans all round as the pair try and get to the American Embassy while getting a better understanding of how their enemies actually live. But even if they manage to make it to their goal, will the Americans make good on Kerry’s promises to help Nikolai – a former member of the KGB – defect during such politically turbulent times?
If it seemed like I was being overly harsh on Ryan Reynolds earlier, I’d like to remind you that 2021’s Red Notice was the perfect example of the bloated, over-budgeted, lazy, streaming blockbuster that seemed to be getting ever more popular over the years. Fairly devoid of anything legitimately containing heart, it thankfully couldn’t be more different to Mayday, which – by comparison – contains actual laughs and characters you actually enjoy spending time with. OK, so Ryan Reynolds is essentially once again playing Ryan Reynolds (as a fighter pilot this time – which sets off yet more alarm bells considering he’s technically already portrayed one in infamous, 2011 trainwreck Green Lantern), but while he’s still cornering the market on charismatic leading men with at least fifteen different wise cracks for any given situation, both Goldstein and Daley have a plan in place to prevent Reynolds’ infamous motor mouth run away with things.
In fact, the filmmakers seems to have a great many plans in place to prevent Mayday from becoming just another Ryan Reynolds quip show, and while the 80s setting and Russian location adds something quite fun to proceedings, the real reason that Mayday works is thanks to Kenneth Branagh. Suddenly proficient at the sort of complex fight choreography that Colin Firth once used to catch us unawares in Kingsman, Branagh’s stoic, bearded, Top Gun afficionado manages to tap into the same kind of funny straight man vein displayed by Tommy Lee Jones in Men In Black. Unflappable, lethal, and yet weirdly sweet in a bearded, wild man living in the woods kind of vibe, Reynolds’ vast blanket of never ending wise cracks is expertly balanced thanks to the fact that his cinematic buddy is just as funny by delivering nothing more than a measured look, or a retort that seems impressively immune to Kerry’s mounting sarcasm.
Another overwhelming plus point is the fact that Goldstein and Daley prioritise character and laughs over unnecessarily excessive action beats, which are content to play to the actor’s strengths. Sure, numerous slickly shot fight sequences show that Branagh’s been putting in serious time with the stunt team and contain some nifty comic timing, but some big, genuine laughs prove to be just as endearing. A moment that has the central pair hiding in a closet, only to find that they have to share it with a mistress when an official’s wife comes home early takes us fully into belly laugh territory. Similarly, an attempt to escape Moscow in a vehicle that cannot be shot at takes an even more farcial turn when both Kerry and Nikolai decide to steal a truck carrying a fucking nuclear missile. While the directing duo ensure a lot of the buddy movie tropes are understandably followed to the letter (the second act falling out hits regular as clockwork), the script also ensures that there’s enough quiter moments of understanding between capitalist and communist to create that genuine feeling of bromance that feels oddly ironic in such turbulent times. And how can you not love a movie that features a bootleg Top Gun that features the guy illegally filming it getting up to the bathroom to take a leak just after Goose buys it?
Realising that it’s the heft in the relationship and not the size of the explosions that truly makes a buddy-based action/comedy soar like a Tomcat fighter jet, Goldstein and Daley ensure that the initially counterintuitive pairing of Reynolds and Branagh carries enough chuckles and heart to carry the film even without copious brawls and chase sequences. In a time where your bog standard, joke cracking action flick now seems to be almost exclusively the domain of streaming (see also this year’s The Wrecking Crew), it’s nice to see that a bit of time, money and effort is still being spent on fortifying cinematic friendships that blow shit up.
Essentially a snowy Midnight Run if you locked in the tongue-in-cheek, buddy politics of Red Heat and the scale of Goldeneye, Mayday ensures that its action snaps by having the world’s greatest living Shakespearian actor beat the shit out of all comers, worship Top Gun and – most impressive of all – counterpoint a fusillade of Ryan Reynolds jokes by keeping a deeply straight face. Fast and funny, it’s always nice when we get another buddy movie that works… or should that technically be a comrade movie?
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