Branagh throws down big time in this unsurprising but fun popcorn buddy action flick
Director: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein
Cast: Ryan Reynolds (Troy “Assassin” Kelly), Kenneth Branagh (Nikolai Ustinov), Marcin Dorociński (Alexander Volkov), Maria Bakalova (Anna Ustinov), David Morse (Harold Kelly), Clark Johnson (Keith Hardwick), Wendy Crewson (Karen Meadows), Louis Cancelmi (Pete Sanders), Josh Hamilton (Dan Hennessey)
Did anyone have on their 2026 film-bingo card “Kenneth Branagh throws goons around in an action movie”? Saying it’s a big change of pace feels like an understatement, with Branagh confessing in interviews he was delighted to get the opportunity to do something so different. So we get to see the actor most associated with Shakespeare slamming punches and kicks into bad guys and also showing some mean comic chops mixing the banter with Ryan Reynolds.
It’s 1987 and Reynolds is ace American pilot Troy “Assassin” Kelly, shot down over Russia during an off-the-books spy mission. The badly injured Troy wakes up tied to a bed in the home of Nikola Ustinov (Kenneth Branagh). Nikolai is obsessed with all-things-American (“I have not eaten McDonalds but I expect I would find it delicious”), his favourite film is Top Gun which he has seen multiple times on a dodgy bootleg VHS and having an American pilot buddy is his dream. He also, fortunately, is a deadly former KGB operative, willing to help Troy escape his former employers so long as Troy can deliver American passports for Nikolai and his estranged dissident daughter Anna (Maria Bakalova). Cue a buddy road-trip through the dangers of the Soviet Union.
Mayday delivers what you hope it will do: fast-paced, witty entertainment for a Saturday night, with two charismatic actors having a whale of a time bouncing off each other. Reynolds can nearly do this sort of off-the-cuff, improvisational cool in his sleep, expertly making Troy someone wittily cool but also brilliant at his job and deeply caring about his men and (dying) father. Few other actors are as comfortable with the casual quip, the gentle leaning on the fourth wall or leave us in no doubt about his competence even while he spends most of the film floundering out of his depth, limping around and bleating in limited Russian.
Reynolds is undeniable funny and charismatic, but he generously gifts much of the finest moments to Branagh. Covered with a Grizzily Adams beard (obviously referenced by Reynolds), Branagh’s under-appreciated gift for comedy is utilised to superb effect. He makes Dimitri hilariously endearing in his naive thrill at his American guest, or the dry enthusiasm he gives to subjects as diverse as McDonalds, Springsteen and Tom Cruise. But he’s also equally deadpan when discussing every single element of espionage spycraft, commenting on events around him (from fights to lovemaking) with a hilarious matter-of-fact laconic bluntness. Branagh’s sensitive eyes also show the vulnerability of a lonely man, plagued with guilt for his failures as a father.
And Branagh, it seems, can throw down. Mayday gives him multiple opportunities for impressively choreographed fights. From a bar-room brawl that uses snooker cues, bottles, arrows and anything else to hand to a machine-gun grabbing train dust-up to using everything from pens to seatbelts in various other fights. Mayday races from entertaining set-piece to entertaining set-piece, after its initial misdirection opening which suggests we might be in for a sort of lightweight Misery with Reynolds as a bed-strapped Jimmy Caan and Branagh as a genial Kathy Bates.
It’s all so entertaining and snaps along so pacily in just over 90 minutes, well-assembled with a witty series of shots and edits by directors John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein that it almost doesn’t matter that the film truthfully has very little in it that is truly new. In fact, with its 1980s setting, it almost adds to the fun that this feels like a meta-riff on half a dozen other 80s buddy movies with Reynolds and Branagh playfully swopping the roles of Maverick and Goose between them depending on the situation. All of the film scenes could have been merrily ripped out of a studio rolodex of set pieces and character riffs, that sort of stuff that has powered hundreds of films before.
There are a few riffs on the distrust and flaws in both systems either side of the Cold War. Nikolai may love America and be deeply ashamed of the brutality of his own system, but he’s fairly clear-eyed that both sides are willing to push a propaganda view of the other. Troy, a firm believer that America is generally flawless and the USSR unquestionably wrong, has his viewpoint challenged throughout – from discovering his government’s sense of right and wrong is far from perfect to finding not all Russians are brainwashed commie fanatics. The villain – a smug Marcin Dorociński doing a lot with not a lot on paper – plans to use events to shatter Gorbachev’s Glasnost, leaving Troy in the unusual position of helping the system he started the film convinced was terrible.
But really Mayday is all about having good fun. And that’s generally what I had when watching it. It’s all familiar and, aside from the novelty of seeing Branagh do it, there isn’t much in its comedy, action, car chase or fighter pilot antics you’ve not seen before. It skirts around more hard-hitting stuff, such as the fraught relationship between Nikolai and his daughter – largely resolved through an off-screen conversation. The most daring thing in it goes largely unspoken: Reynold’s character is a hotshot fighter pilot at least in his forties with no girlfriend or partner, expresses no sexual interest in any woman in the film and has a faultless gaydar – is Reynolds winkingly playing the full subtext of Top Gun here?
Mayday is assembled with real light comic energy, by people who really know what they doing, to put together a film that’s not pretentious, outstays its welcome or trying too hard to anything other than pop a grin on your face. Which you’d be hard-pressed not to have at some point.
