It’s overselling Mayday a bit to suggest that it could have been made and released in 1987, when it takes place. That said, it’s rather novel to see one of these throwbacks to the heyday of a certain strain of blockbuster moviemaking actually make use of the setting and time. As realized by co-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (who are on a bit of a heater after Game Night and the under-appreciated Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves), Mayday is a breezy facsimile of the kind of buddy-adventure comedies that populated cable back then. It’s also notable that this is in part a Top Gun homage in which the characters have all seen Top Gun.
Ryan Reynolds is navy Pilot Troy Kelley, callsign “Assassin,” who get assigned to fly an SR-71 Blackbird supersonic spy plane over Russian targets to snap a few pictures. Unfortunately, he’s shot down on the way home — after a largely terrific action sequence that owes a lot to Top Gun: Maverick and which showcases the gorgeous Blackbird, one of this writer’s favorite pieces of aviation tech. Landing deep inside Russian territory, Troy ends up finding shelter with Nicolai “Nick” Ustinov (Kenneth Branagh with a crazy fake beard), formerly a hardened KGB operator who now lives quietly in the woods and is obsessed with Americana; specifically, he’s desperate to try McDonalds, and there are a surprising amount of Springsteen needle drops on the soundtrack, just to name a couple of examples. They form a tentative alliance, with Troy offering Nick asylum in the U.S. in exchange for his help getting across the border into Finland.
Reynolds and Branagh make surprisingly good mismatched buddies. Mileages will vary on just how much of Reynolds’ shtick is tolerable, but he is genuinely pulling it back here to a degree (although realistically he will probably never stop merely playing “Ryan Reynolds”). More important in selling the film than whatever Reynolds’ version of restraint is, however, is Branagh, who is the one really carrying the show. He’s funnier and looser here than he’s been in ages, palpably having a terrific time rehashing his Tenet Russian accent and getting most of the best jokes. What’s more, he’s the center of the action, getting to do his version of the Bob Odenkirk late-period turn into a convincing on-screen fighter — with the help of an awful lot of digital head and face replacement, that is.
Also a boon to the Mayday is that its pace is appreciably brisk and the action is lively — and, above all, legible. Most action movies that were actually made in 1987 don’t have this kind of production value, and certainly weren’t able to pull off some of the excitable, fluid camerawork here. Shots pass through walls and over ceilings, flip over themselves and the characters, and generally give room for the action beats and stunt performances to come through rather than shredding them in coverage. The film slows down a bit while closing on the third act, when misunderstanding that becomes a betrayal is introduced, on top of the addition of Nick’s estranged, dissident daughter (Maria Bakalova) and some business about Troy’s ill father (David Morse), both of whom could be entirely excised from the narrative if it weren’t for the unfortunate desire to push some unnecessary emotional stakes. Still, if Mayday isn’t a great movie, it is a pretty terrific example of what makes films like this work when they’re really firing on all cylinders and how the audience’s attachment to them works in a modern context. On top of that, it’s the relatively rare straight-to-streaming action film in this age of slop that probably could have used a shot at theaters — it certainly has the chops. But most amusingly, arguably most importably, it’s a Top Gun homage in which all of the characters have seen Top Gun.
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