Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh lead Apple TV+ Cold War comedy

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Apple TV+ has released Mayday, a Cold War-set action-comedy pairing Ryan Reynolds with Kenneth Branagh, from the writing-directing team of Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, best known for Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Set in 1987, the film follows a brash US Navy pilot, nicknamed "Assassin", who is sent on a covert reconnaissance flight over Soviet territory and is forced to eject when the mission goes wrong. He is dragged, injured, from enemy soil by a solitary Russian who turns out to be a former KGB operative with an unlikely devotion to American culture, and the pair form a wary alliance to get the pilot home while being hunted across the country.

Reviewers agree the film wears its influences openly, invoking the fighter-jock swagger of Top Gun, the hostage-buddy dynamic of Midnight Run, and the wisecracking set-piece spectacle associated with 1980s and 1990s studio action fare such as Die Hard and Lethal Weapon. The Russian character's cabin is depicted as a shrine to Americana, complete with a well-worn bootleg videotape of Top Gun and a stated longing to try a McDonald's hamburger, a running joke that critics single out as an effective source of the film's comic warmth. As the two men flee across the country, the story builds towards a large set-piece built around the Soviet Union's annual May Day military parade, culminating in a chase involving a hijacked missile launcher.

The supporting cast draws praise, particularly Marcin Dorocinski as the relentless Soviet agent pursuing the pair, alongside Maria Bakalova in a smaller role as a Russian civilian. Coverage highlights a string of elaborately staged sequences, including the pilot's fiery mid-air ejection, hand-to-hand fights led by Branagh, a foot chase reportedly filmed using Budapest's Heroes' Square standing in for Red Square, and a climactic confrontation aboard an aircraft. Several accounts credit the chemistry between Reynolds and Branagh, and Branagh's deadpan comic turn in particular, as the film's strongest asset, with the escalating action treated as a backdrop to their evolving, reluctantly affectionate partnership.

Assessments of the finished film vary in warmth. One review calls it an outstanding, career-best effort for the directing duo and praises its refusal to paint either superpower as simply heroic or villainous, treating characters on both sides with more nuance than genre convention typically allows. Another is more mixed, enjoying the central pairing and the craft of the action scenes while noting that some of the plotting tips into knowing silliness. A third, while calling the film a hugely enjoyable, big-scale entertainment, focuses much of its commentary on the business context, arguing that a film of this scale and audience appeal should have had a cinema release rather than going straight to streaming, and ties this lament to producer David Ellison's stated ambitions for a heavy theatrical slate should the proposed Paramount-Warner Bros merger proceed.

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