‘Mayday’: A Familiar Buddy-Action Flick With Flair

A fun enough action comedy, Mayday flashes plenty of flair though it can’t help but fall back on the tried and true buddy movie beats.

From John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, the duo behind films like Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons, Mayday arrives with a promisingly offbeat premise and somewhat high expectations.

Unfortunately it never quite becomes the rousing and irreverent comedy you want it to be. Still, it’s a perfectly decent, occasionally very entertaining watch, just one that leaves you wishing it had taken a few more risks.

Ryan Reynolds plays Lt. Troy AKA Assassin, a Navy pilot whose black-ops mission goes sideways, leaving him stranded behind enemy lines during the Cold War. His unlikely refuge is Nikolai or Nick (Kenneth Branagh), an eccentric former KGB agent with a sincere fascination with America, largely informed by Top Gun.

Nik offers to help him get back home in exchange for asylum, sending the mismatched pair on the run.

The setup is a clever enough excuse for a buddy comedy, lightly poking at the propaganda America and Russia have long fed each other through two men raised to see the other as the enemy. It’s hardly a deep dive into Cold War politics, quickly pivoting from gag to gag, while its cartoonish villain and well-worn reluctant friends formula offers little by way of surprise.

Still, the idea gives the otherwise silly adventure a little more meat and the pair’s chemistry keeps it afloat.

It also helps enormously that Branagh is clearly having a great time as he carries the film. As Nick, he’s stoic but sweet, ridiculous but sincere, brining a deadpan charm and unexpected vulnerability to what could easily have been reduced to more of a Russian caricature. Armed with a flawless Russian accent, Branagh’s comic timing is razor-sharp and even when the film is at its silliest, he gives the character something genuine to hold on to.

He also gets to throw himself into the action more than one might expect considering his co-star, and watching Branagh lead that is nothing short of a delightful and thrilling watch.

Reynolds, meanwhile, is unsurprisingly playing Ryan Reynolds. His familiar snarky, bewildered straight-man routine is tolerable thanks to the decent writing and his chemistry with Branagh. But it makes the film jarringly less interesting, making it hard not to wonder how much more interesting the film might have been with a different kind of leading man, one beyond making the character feel like another Ryan Reynolds vehicle.

Aside from Branagh, the film’s saving grace is Barry Peterson’s cinematography. The action is packed with inventive choreo and practical stunts, while Peterson’s playful, constantly moving camera imbues the film with a real pulse and makes its modest scale feel even bigger.

Daley and Goldstein’s fingerprints are all over it too, favouring a mischievous visual style over the increasingly interchangeable John Wick action grammar, making even thinner material look stylish.

You can see the filmmakers trying to push the material somewhere more interesting, even when the story itself refuses to follow.

Aside from the glaring Deadpool-shaped issue, Mayday also takes a while to find its rhythm, then loses it again in the third acts, where the sentimentality gets bigger and cheesier than the rest of the movie has earned.

Ultimately, its a fairly light affair, with a limited sense of scale that feels more naturally suited to a casual night on the couch, and there are worse ways to spend a couple of hours.

For anyone craving an old-school action comedy with some cool filmmaking, Reynolds completists and, frankly, dads looking for something fun to chuck on, Mayday is an easy enough watch.

Not necessarily a hidden gem, but Branagh, the action and Daley and Goldstein’s visual flair give it enough personality to zip along, but still leaves you with something woefully familiar and wanting to like it more than you do.

3/5

Mayday is available to stream on Apple TV.