Mayday
A theatrical knight and a comic Canadian team up for a stylish, eminently diverting action-comedy packed with surprises.
Cold comfort: Ryan Reynolds and Sir Kenneth Branagh
Image courtesy of Apple.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Kenneth Branagh has played a wide variety of characters in his 41-year film career. He even played Russians in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit and Tenet. But, at 65, this is the first time he has played a Russian who is spectacularly adept at hand-to-hand combat, learned from his days as a KGB agent. He is Nikolai Ustinov, a hermit whose cabin in the woods is adorned with posters of John Cougar, Neil Armstrong, the Stars and Stripes and Mount Rushmore. Nikolai is a massive fan of everything American, especially the songs of Bruce Springsteen – and (keep it to yourself) he has watched Top Gun more than a hundred times. And talking of Top Gun, the year is 1987 and Tony Scott’s film is still very much a potent part of the American zeitgeist, something daredevil Navy pilot Troy Kelly (Ryan Reynolds) is pleasantly aware of. He is Maverick incarnate – his call sign is ‘Assassin’ – and after he performs a gravity-defying stunt to save a colleague, he is enlisted the next morning to fly an undercover mission into Russia, forty years after the start of the Cold War…
Mayday, written and directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein – they who brought us Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves – is in essence a period buddy movie, but is actually so much more. Ryan Reynolds recycles his smart-mouth shtick as the Navy’s cockiest pilot – and he is dependably funny – while Kenneth Branagh brings us a sidekick who rises above the tropes of the genre. Nikolai has his reasons for having left the KGB, but he still loves his country, if not his government. There is a lovely scene on a train where Nikolai tells Troy that, “we were told that America would destroy us. That your greed and soullessness would bring about the end of humanity.” Troy, taking this in, replies, “and we were taught that you were cogs in a giant world-killing machine.” Nikolai: “We were both fed lies. Are you, too, not a product of your system, Troy?”
In spite of being set in 1987, Mayday feels chillingly relevant, and yet is infused with moments of surprising humanity. When a family takes Nikolai and Troy in for momentary sustenance – a family that has to choose between putting coal on the fire and food on the table – Troy sees a side of the Russian people that wasn’t in his pilot’s handbook. Abrading any hints of Slavic cliché, Branagh brings enormous warmth, wisdom and compassion to his character, and yet is just as funny as his more famously comic co-star. And working with a reputed budget of $150 million, the writer-directors do not stint on the action scenes, either, many of which are just as thrilling and spectacular as those of any Mission: Impossible episode. The sequence in Moscow’s Red Square is just one of many jaw-dropping highlights. But it’s the background detail, visual flair and lashings of incidental humour that makes Mayday a consistently surprising delight. Ryan Reynolds is invariably good value (he is very funny here), while the film, in-between bouts of superior stuntwork, questions the status quo in the world today, providing an entertaining entertainment unafraid to make us examine our own ingrained values.
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Kenneth Branagh, Marcin Dorociński, Maria Bakalova, David Morse, Clark Johnson, Wendy Crewson, Louis Cancelmi, Josh Hamilton.
Dir John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, Pro David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Ashley Fox, Johnny Pariseau, Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, Ex Pro Ryan Reynolds and John G. Scotti, Screenplay John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, Ph Barry Peterson, Pro Des Nora Takacs Ekberg, Ed Jamie Gross and John Lee, Music Colin Stetson, Costumes Debra McGuire, Sound Chris Diebold, Dialect coach Emma Woodvine.
Apple Studios/Skydance Media/Maximum Effort-Apple TV+.
111 mins. USA. 2025. UK and US Rel: 4 September 2026. Cert. 12.
