OVERVIEW
Mayday arrives as another streaming original that repackages the mid-budget genres Hollywood has largely abandoned in theaters, building its familiar pleasures around recognizable stars and selling the resulting nostalgia as an undemanding night at home. Set in 1987, it follows Lieutenant Troy “Assassin” Kelly (Ryan Reynolds), an American pilot stranded in Soviet territory after a reconnaissance mission goes spectacularly wrong, whose unlikely lifeline is Nikolai Ustinov (Kenneth Branagh), a former KGB agent turned carpenter whose understanding of America comes largely from watching Top Gun more than a hundred times. What follows takes the shape of a Cold War version of the mismatched buddy action comedies of the 1980s and 1990s, with the wisecracking American and his deeply eccentric Soviet companion shooting, arguing, and making their way toward an inevitable friendship.
BACKGROUND
John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein wrote Mayday before the 2023 WGA strike, following the fantastically entertaining yet unfortunately underseen Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, whose disappointing box office has so far kept a completed sequel from getting made. The idea for Mayday took shape partly in the wake of Top Gun: Maverick‘s success, with the filmmakers looking back to the buddy adventures and unabashed American heroism of an earlier era. Their affection for Tony Scott’s 1986 film became so central to the story that using it required permission from Tom Cruise, who reportedly read the screenplay and understood they were celebrating the film rather than mocking it. Production began in Montreal in March 2024 under the working title Blackbird, with additional filming in Budapest and a second unit spending a month capturing real aerial footage in the South of France. Those plates were later projected on a volume stage for the cockpit sequences, an unusually elaborate undertaking for a film that, despite its stars and scale, ultimately bypassed theaters and premiered exclusively on Apple TV.
THE REVIEW
For all the effort that apparently went into putting Reynolds in the air, the opening scenes of Mayday have that unmistakable fake-movie feel, where the physics never quite feel right and everything looks one gloss too polished, as if the actors never left a soundstage while sound and score work overtime to manufacture some excitement. Beyond the early weightless aerial sequences, the film quickly challenges the audience’s goodwill with unnaturally mechanical and incredibly try-hard yet unfunny dialogue, delivered by a coasting Reynolds in the familiar sarcastic persona he has kept playing over and over since Deadpool refreshed his career. It is a rough start that makes you expect the worst, complete with a tired sick-father storyline and the screenplay-by-checklist quality that has come to define so many expensive streaming originals.
Then Kenneth Branagh appears. The pairing of Reynolds and Branagh could hardly be more curious (and frankly, it was what made me interested in the film in the first place), putting a classically trained actor and filmmaker who made his name with Shakespeare and has a tendency to approach things with the utmost seriousness (including his Marvel outing and Nolan villainous roles) opposite a movie star who has spent the last decade playing variations on the same self mocking, sarcastic character. Daley and Goldstein make good use of the contrast and, more importantly, resist asking Branagh to compete with Reynolds at his own game. Nikolai initially has some of the blissfully misguided innocence of Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover, with an understanding of America assembled almost entirely from movies and pop culture and very little awareness of how strange his behavior can be, including casually offering Troy tea shortly after being attacked by him. Branagh plays every absurdity with complete sincerity, never winking at the audience or suggesting that Nikolai understands why any of this might be funny. It makes him considerably funnier, but also unexpectedly endearing, and Branagh gradually turns what could have been a one-joke character into someone whose affection for Troy feels completely sincere.
By the time the two start behaving less like a mismatched comedy duo and more like actual friends, Mayday has also settled into a much more enjoyable action-comedy. An apartment escape is the standout, centered on Nikolai planting clues about what he is about to do before carrying out the entire plan with ridiculous precision, all captured with inventive camera movement. A train escape gets similar mileage from passengers gradually recognizing Nikolai, while a late truck chase has the speed and physical comedy needed. The humor is hit and miss, rarely producing a full laugh, but Branagh gets considerable mileage from Nikolai’s reactions to Troy, whether briefly impressed by Troy claiming he anticipated his pen attack, only for Troy to admit he was bluffing, or baffled by the stupidity of the American putting his hand in front of a bullet meant for Nikolai, which simply goes straight through it. There are still plenty of deeply unfunny attempts, particularly a repeated baby gag and the explanation behind Troy’s nickname.
The artificiality never entirely goes away, either, particularly whenever Mayday needs to bend its story around Volkov (Marcin Dorociński). After somehow surviving a pen lodged in his neck, an injury the film promptly forgets about, he returns for a ludicrous confrontation aboard a plane where characters casually stand beside an open door in midflight as though someone had merely rolled down the window during a Sunday drive. Even the final docking sequence feels strangely clunky, staged with little of the tension such a precarious maneuver should generate. Watching all of this at home probably does Mayday a favor, since the smaller screen is considerably more forgiving of visual effects, awkward spatial relationships, and shortcuts that a theatrical presentation might have exposed.
FINAL THOUGHTS
There is probably no better compliment to Mayday than to say it represents the better version of what these streaming originals can be. It remains too clunky and disposable to make much of an argument for the theatrical experience Hollywood has denied it, but Branagh brings an unusual level of commitment to a movie that could easily have paired Reynolds with another familiar face from the streaming-original carousel and called it a day. Between some inventive action and the unexpectedly sweet friendship, there is enough here to make the formula work for 110 minutes, even if a few days later there may not be much left to remember.
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- Where to watch
Apple TV- Where to watch
- Apple TV
Play trailer
- Original title
- Mayday
- Director
- Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley
- Cast
- Ryan Reynolds, Kenneth Branagh, Marcin Dorociński, Maria Bakalova, David Morse, Clark Johnson, Wendy Crewson, Louis Cancelmi
- Rated
- 14A
- Screenwriter
- John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein, Darrin Denlinger, Martin L. Mercer
- Composer
- Colin Stetson
- Cinematography
- Barry Peterson
- Editor
- Jamie Gross, John Lee
- Country
- Language
- English
- Budget
- $25 million