Mayday is both the name of a celebration of workers’ solidarity historically associated with Russia and a distress signal pilots and mariners use to ask for immediate help. For Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley’s fourth collaboration as co-directors, Mayday literally and thematically contains both.
The film brings David Ellison’s producing weight together with the on-screen appeal of Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh to celebrate the style and energy of 80s pop culture.
Although it is fun, the film also leans so heavily on the familiar elements it uses and celebrates that you start to wonder whether it is quietly asking for a lifeline from them. As you enjoy it, you cannot help but wonder if it is also a quiet cry of Reynolds settling deeper into a single onscreen mode with each new project.
The story is set in 1987, in the twilight of the Cold War. US Navy pilot Troy “Assassin” Kelly, played by Reynolds, is on a covert mission inside Soviet territory when his plane crashes. He is pulled out of danger by Nikolai “Nick” Ustinov, a former KGB agent played by Branagh, who abandoned the service after recognizing the cost it was extracting from him.
Nick offers to help Troy get out of the country. Troy promises to help Nick secure residency in America. What follows is the two of them trying to make good on that deal while the Russian government hunts them down and the American government refuses to officially acknowledge the mission ever happened.
What Works ✅
Intermixture of the Theme and Comedic Tone: At the centre of the film is a question about what it means to be loyal to an idea of a country rather than the actual people who live in it.
Nick spent his career as a KGB agent enforcing his government’s vision of the world, and after leaving that role, he simply replaced it with an equally idealized image of America as something like paradise.
Troy is the inverse of Nick. He is nicknamed “Captain America” for his reflexive defense of Western capitalism; he is a man who has never seriously questioned whether the country he serves lives up to the values he is defending.
The film traces how both of them come to see the people inside these ideologies rather than the ideologies themselves.
Though appealing, the theme runs the risk of becoming preachy, and it occasionally tips in that direction. But the film mostly avoids that problem by weaving the theme into the natural comedic rhythm of Troy and Nick’s interactions rather than stopping to announce it.
Troy’s wisecracking reads as a kind of culture shock, a way of processing a world that does not operate the way he expected. Nick’s straight-faced sincerity reflects a man working through the gap between the America he imagined from films and music and the America he is actually experiencing through Troy. By the time the film reaches its more sentimental moments on this front, the theme has been earned through enough genuine character interaction that it goes down easily rather than feeling forced.
Branagh’s Performance Grounds the Comedy: Kenneth Branagh’s Nick enters the story as a man who has spent years dreaming of America. He carries a belief that it is a place where anything is possible and where people are treated as people.
In a film like this, that quality could easily be played for broad laughs, turning Nick into a bumbling, over-the-top Russian archetype, but Branagh does the opposite.
He plays Nick with quiet, understated humor and a steady expression of someone who has no idea the film he is in is a comedy. That straightforwardness comes off as more sincerely funny and realistic than a more exaggerated performance would.
More importantly, Nick balances the film. Reynolds’ Troy is built on one-liners and sharp comebacks, and Branagh’s serious, earnest responses to that energy give the exchanges genuine weight. Nick is not humorless, but his humor comes from sincerity rather than wit, and that contrast is what gives their dynamic its warmth. It also keeps the film from floating away on pure entertainment by making it feel like it is about something.
The Cinematography Paces and Engages the Film: The cinematography is consistently energetic. The camera moves through settings with a smooth, continuous motion, sliding around furniture and locations as it transitions between scenes through interactions with these spaces and settings.
In action sequences, the angles are inventive enough to hold attention without confusing the eye. The choreography is well-served by a camera that seems to anticipate the movement rather than simply chase it, pulling the viewer into the action while still allowing them to follow what is happening.
The camera also knows when to slow down. A particular scene on a train, built around suspense and a moment of recognition, shows the cinematography working to dramatic effect rather than just kinetic energy, and it stands out as one of the more memorable sequences in the film.
What Doesn’t Work ❌
Supporting Characters are Ignored: The film does thoughtful work establishing the personal stakes for both main characters. Nick’s motivation to help Troy is shaped by his daughter (Maria Bakalova) and his desire to build a different life for her. Troy’s evolving view of his country is connected to a subplot involving his father (David Morse), and that also points toward something more complicated than straightforward patriotism. Both are meaningful threads, but neither gets the space it needs to land properly.
The closest the film comes to exploring these threads with real depth is a scene between Nick and his daughter, where years of unresolved tension between them come to an instant resolution. It is a well-staged moment, shot through a window so Troy watches their exchange in silence while the score and their body language carry what would otherwise be dialogue, but the way it is captured offers little to the viewer.
The film also moves past the tension between Nick and Troy too quickly by using a revelation connected to Nick’s call sign as a fast resolution rather than sitting with the discomfort. And this is its most consistent problem; whenever tension builds around something real, it reaches for a joke, a sentimental shortcut with film tricks, or a plot device to move on from it.
Troy’s arc suffers most from this. By the end of the film, he is hard to hold in memory, because the moments that should have defined him were either deflected or left unfinished.
Reynolds and an 80s Elements are not distinctive: The late 1980s, with the Cold War running on fumes while certain factions refused to let it die, is an interesting backdrop for a story about two men questioning their loyalties. But the film’s script relies so heavily on 80s cultural references and genre conventions from that era that the setting starts to feel like decoration rather than context.
The story rarely does anything that feels specific to that moment. It could have taken place in almost any era of Cold War tension without losing much.
This is made harder to shake by Reynolds’ performance, which closely resembles the fast-talking, self-aware characters he has built his recent career around. The wit, timing, and the particular brand of ironic comments are the same. Troy feels less like a character who lives in 1987 and more like a character from another film who has been placed into this one.
⚖️ Verdict: 3.5/5
The most obvious thing about Mayday is how much work went into making it broadly enjoyable. It is fast, fun, and looks and moves well.
What it avoids, largely by design, is anything that might slow it down or sit uncomfortably long enough to leave a real mark. That makes it an easy watch and a forgettable one. You will not regret spending time with it. You are also unlikely to find yourself thinking about it a week later.
