Mayday: Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh wage a cold war (review)

A buddy movie where an American pilot and a former KGB agent must team up to survive. Uneven but very entertaining, and full of comic outbursts.

In the field of twisted comedy (through action, genre, etc.), the duo formed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley is unbeatable. Take a look at their film, modest on paper but quite impeccable in terms of the pleasure provided: Long live the holidays, Game Night, Dungeons & Dragons and therefore Maydaythe latest one which has just arrived on Apple TV. We are in the middle of the Cold War and a Reaganite US Navy pilot (Ryan Reynolds, sharper than usual) crashes in enemy territory, after a reconnaissance mission that goes wrong. His only salvation is a Russian hermit (Kenneth Branagh who is having a lot of fun) who is a fan of American culture – he watches a pirated VHS of Top Gun and dreams of eating at McDonald’s – who happens to be a former KGB agent.

Goldstein and Daley play with the mismatched duo Midnight Run, but inject some not so frowned upon reflections on imperialism, the hypocrisy of governments and soft power. This is what gives an extra soul to Maydaybuilt like a road movie clear in its stakes, where the two protagonists will have to survive until reaching the border, with the Russian police at their heels. The action scenes are extremely fun, going from bar fights (with Branagh as a powerful mandal splicer) to the chase behind the wheel of a missile launcher on Red Square. No time to be bored, Mayday goes straight ahead and sows along its path a host of gags of random quality. But some are truly hilarious and armed with impeccable comic timing: a meal with an absolutely terrifying kid, without any other form of explanation; a pure boulevard scene of the lover-in-the-closet type; the distorted cliché of the character hidden in a house that the villain is inspecting…

And even if the film ends up being a little too long for its own good, it’s hard to resist the desire for entertainment anchored to the bodies of Goldstein and Daley. Is it that Mayday would have found its audience if it had been released in theaters? Without getting too carried away, it seems obvious that no. But is it part of the top of the basket of platform productions? Without a doubt.

Mayday, by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, with Ryan Reynolds, Kenneth Branagh… 1h50. On Apple TV.