Kenneth Branagh and Ryan Reynolds star in action comedy Mayday
Kenneth Branagh and Ryan Reynolds play the leading roles in the action comedy Mayday, set in 1987 in the Soviet Union. Reynolds plays U.S. Navy Lieutenant Troy “Assassin” Kelly, whose Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird aircraft is shot down during a covert operation over Soviet territory.
As Asharq Al-Awsat reports, after making an emergency landing, Kelly ends up in the yard of Nikolai Ustinov, a former KGB agent played by Branagh. Ustinov leads a reclusive life in the forest, is fascinated by the United States, and decides to help the American pilot leave the country.
An alliance between a pilot and a former KGB agent
Ustinov is an ardent fan of Tony Scott’s film Top Gun, which was released a year before the events of Mayday. The character has a pirated VHS copy of the movie and claims to have watched it more than one hundred times. According to the character, this film shaped his view of Americans and was the reason why he decided to help Kelly.
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Kelly is portrayed as a self-confident, sarcastic pilot who considers himself the best aviator. The reviewer notes that Branagh effectively becomes the central figure of the acting duo: his character has a more distinct story arc, while Reynolds’ character mostly reacts to Ustinov’s actions.
Self-irony about 1980s action films
Mayday was directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, known for the films Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. In the film, they combined practical hand-to-hand combat scenes with a self-ironic take on 1980s action movies.
Marcin Dorociński also appears in the film as KGB officer Alexander Volkov, who pursues Kelly. In the reviewer’s opinion, the film touches on the one-sided nature of patriotism, but does not claim to be a serious examination of the Cold War or the use of people as political figures.
