Mayday review: New Apple TV action comedy starring Ryan Reynolds, a surprisingly sensitive entertainer

A US-Soviet tale with a twist

The year is 1987. Top Gun (1986) is the biggest hit in the world and public sentiment against then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in Russia is laced with resentment. An overzealous KGB officer, clearly modelled on Russian President Vladimir Putin (a former KGB officer), doesn’t have any patience for Gorbachev’s “glasnost” policies; so he goes rogue in an effort to weed out the downed American pilot and use him as a political tool to reignite tensions between the USSR and the USA. He gives chase to Troy and Nikolai — those are our mismatched heroes — across the Soviet Union as they make a beeline for the Finnish border.

On their journey, both Troy and Nikolai discover that they have been told lies about each other’s countries all their lives. Nikolai was already a convert; he split from the KGB years ago, having become obsessed with American culture and the illusion of liberty that it presented. He is not the enemy, Troy quickly realises. In fact, he may be “the biggest fan” of America.

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But because Mayday unfolds mostly from Troy’s perspective, his learnings about the Russian people are more pronounced. He discovers, for instance, that Russian people will open their doors to complete strangers simply because it’s the decent thing to do. The individualism that his generation was encouraged to embrace, Troy discovers, has eroded social trust among his people. He also learns that his opinions about communism have been shaped by his government for years, through ‘propaganda’ and ‘fear-mongering’.

The questioning spirit

Mayday is an old-fashioned action-comedy, much like Lethal Weapon (1987), Bad Boys (1995) and Rush Hour (1998). But framed against a contemporary backdrop, its narrative about American and Russian brotherhood feels positively radical. One of its key themes is the act of questioning your elected government and not simply bowing down to it. “Right now, the only way to stand up for my country is to stand up to it,” Troy says in one scene that pushes Mayday into an entirely unexpected thematic territory.

Thematic depth, however, isn’t the only thing that Mayday has going for it.

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Directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, the movie is impressively mounted, with plenty of exciting set-pieces and a well-realised landscape that doesn’t feel like it was created on computers. An early highlight is when Troy and Nikolai find themselves on a moving train across Siberia, filled to the brim with Soviet troops. It’s an instantly engaging premise, one that the movie satisfyingly lives up to. Another scene involves them crashing the annual Victory Day parade in Moscow and taking Mayday into a direction that would make Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel very proud.

Even a simple montage of Troy and Nikolai driving across the USSR communicates more about their shared humanity than pages of dialogue could. Factories, farms, and friends to rely on — they exist in every country. Branagh, who has played several Russian villains in his career, avoids turning Nikolai into a caricature with a performance that has just the right amount of vulnerability. More importantly, Mayday marks a much-needed return to form for Reynolds, who has been stuck in a creative rut for quite some time now. It’s the best streaming original movie since The Rip, which was released on Netflix back in January.