On the surface, Mayday, the new Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh movie that began streaming on Apple TV+ last week, looks like just another action comedy with Russian villains. Written and directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley—the duo behind Game Night and theDungeons and Dragons movie—Mayday stars Reynolds as a U.S. Navy pilot name who crash lands behind enemy lines in Soviet Russia in 1987, during the Gorbachev years of the Cold War, and finds himself relying on the charity and good will of a former KGB agent, played by Kenneth Branagh. While the film isn’t brave enough to actually insult American values, it does inject some nuance into the “Russia bad, America good” mentality of so many ’80s action movies. Plus, there are some genuinely hilarious jokes. That bit where they are hiding the closet with the mistress? Pure gold.
Photo: Apple TV
