Review: Mayday — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott

Mayday

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Rating: PG-13

Run Time: 1 hour 50 minutes

Stars: Ryan Reynolds, Kenneth Branagh

Writer/Directors: John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein

Streaming on Apple TV

Beyond its late-Cold War setting, this funny buddy comedy starring Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh bristles with a distinctive ’80s vibe: a giddy sense that the world was shifting under our feet; that tomorrow’s news just might bring word that everything has changed forever, and not necessarily for the worst.

But while the rest of us speculated about the future, the militaries of the United States and the Soviet Union were stuck in the past; eyeing each other with dread suspicion only a DEFCON level or so below the dark days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. That’s why hotshot Navy pilot Troy “Assassin” Kelly has been assigned a dangerous mission: to fly reconnaissance over a remote Soviet military installation.

But the job quickly goes sideways: Shot down behind enemy lines, Kelly stumbles into the care of Nik, a kindly, bearded Russian recluse – a guy whose cabin is, oddly, plastered with kitschy Americana, including an “I (Heart) NY” bumper sticker, curled picture postcards, and a 48-star American flag. But Nik isn’t some clueless clod hopper: Turns out he’s a retired KGB agent who a) quit because his conscience wouldn’t let him stay and b) is obsessed with popular U.S. culture to the point of owning a bootleg VHS copy of Top Gun.

Enamored with his houseguest and longing for a connection to America, Nik agrees to help Kelly get to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow – a thousand-mile voyage across the Soviet countryside, with the KGB and Russian Army following their snowy tracks.

There’s a heapin’ helping of Cold War comedy influence here, but mostly Mayday relies on the tried-and-true buddy/rom-com formula: Cool guy meets weird guy, cool guy can’t stand weird guy, cool guy becomes reluctantly fond of weird guy, cool guy alienates weird guy, cool guy finally realizes weird guy is the best friend he’s ever had. If Spies Like Us and Planes, Trains and Automobiles had a baby, it would be named Mayday.

The script by co-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (who collaborated on one of my all-time favorite under-the-radar comedies, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone) is reliably funny, if stubbornly formulaic: The film never wanders off track even a little, hitting all the right beats precisely where you expect them to come. There’s lots of CGI/AI trickery evident – necessarily so to create some mighty nifty action set pieces and sprawling city scenes that would otherwise have presumably required tens of millions of dollars in additional production costs. It’s when the pair resort to digital magic in smaller settings – flying through windows, crashing through floors, and zipping through hotel door peepholes – that one wishes the special effects budget had been trimmed a bit.

It is the leading pair who breathe delight into Mayday. Nik is played with quiet deference and subdued regret by Branagh, who happily doesn’t let being one of our finest film actors prevent him from occasionally just having a good time. Reynolds plays Kelly as a smug flyboy who too readily believes his own press; a guy who, three years after Top Gun made pilots sexier than ever, has cast himself as Tom Cruise in the smirking, sky-streaking flesh. Reynolds remains among the screen’s funniest deadpan comics – no one else, I’m guessing, could get a laugh-out-loud moment just by saying, “I’m eating bear?”

The Cold War – that delicate relative peace among the U.S., the Soviet Union and China – hovered over the globe for about 40 years. Nearly the same amount of time has passed since then, but somehow the dynamics of that naggingly troubled time persist. In the final reel, Mayday somberly acknowledges that we still live in a world where governments try to control their people by convincing them to hate The Others. But after bonding with the man he was taught to fear as his enemy, he’s not having any more of it.

“The only way to stand up for my country,” Kelly concludes, “is to stand up to it.”