Before you press play
Watch if
You want a light, funny couple of hours and you are happy to let a Cold War plot make no sense whatsoever.
Wait if
You came for the espionage thriller the setup promises, or for jokes that land more often than they miss.
For its first two thirds, Mayday is a very light Deadpool. Not the rating — the shape. Ryan Reynolds talks fast at a man who does not talk fast back, and the film would usually rather reach the next joke than finish the scene it is in.
The premise was tired before the cameras rolled. An American and a Russian stuck with each other in 1987 is a story that has been told to death. What Mayday does differently is refuse to be a spy film at all — it is a comedy first and last, which is the right call, because the espionage plot here would not survive five minutes of serious attention.
Kenneth Branagh as Nikolai Ustinov
Nikolai Ustinov (Kenneth Branagh) is the reason to watch this. He is a former KGB officer who walked away because he could no longer tell himself the job was worth doing, and he now lives as a carpenter in a house full of American things. Everything he knows about America, he learned from American films, and his favourite is Top Gun, worn thin on a bootleg tape.
That is a sharper joke than the film seems to notice. Top Gun is not a record of what America is like; it is two hours of advertising for how good America is at being America. Nikolai has built an entire country in his head out of a film built to sell one, and now he wants to move there.
Branagh plays him as a delighted child who has finally been handed the thing he asked for. What stops it becoming annoying is that he is never played as stupid. He knows exactly how his country works, what the KGB does, and what he is risking. The innocence is about America and nothing else, and America is the one subject where he turns out to be wrong.
Ryan Reynolds as Troy Kelly
Troy “Assassin” Kelly (Ryan Reynolds) is doing the thing Ryan Reynolds does, which you either want or you do not. He is better in the quiet half of the part than in the jokes: the slow move from not trusting this stranger at all to depending on him completely is played properly, in small steps, rather than in one scene where somebody says something meaningful.
Their pairing is the film's only real idea, and it is a good one. The friendship is built rather than announced, and by the last twenty minutes it has earned enough that the film can ask you to care.
Everyone else is furniture. Alexander Volkov (Marcin Dorociński) does everything a Cold War villain is required to do and nothing you will still be thinking about an hour later.
The comedy in Mayday
The joke rate is high. The hit rate is not. A great deal of the middle of this film is a setup arriving, landing flat, and the next one starting before anyone has had time to notice.
The ones that work run on character rather than on wordplay, and almost all of them belong to Branagh. There is a running gag about a home-made drink that gets two laughs out of one prop, a two-second gag in a car that is the funniest moment in the film, and a payoff on Troy's callsign that the script sits on patiently for most of the running time before cashing it in. That last one is the best-built joke here, and it is also the only one the film has the discipline to set up properly.
The plot and the action
The story is a single line: get out of Russia. Nothing is layered underneath it, and the film is weakest when it pretends otherwise. A detour to Nikolai's estranged daughter Anna (Maria Bakalova) is the one stretch that reaches for something real, and it gets about half of it.
It is at its best when it stops talking and runs. The final act is the only sustained stretch where the direction is carrying the film rather than the dialogue, and it is also the point where the film gives up on being believable altogether and is entirely right not to care.
Do not think about it. That is the deal this film is offering, and if you take it you will have a good time.
Is Mayday worth watching?
Once, yes. This is a plane film, or an iPad-on-a-long-evening film — the sort you are glad is there and would not go looking for twice in the same month. It opens well, sags badly through the middle, and then picks up and finishes on real warmth, including one late moment that lands closer to moving than anything before it.
One performance worth the time, one friendship worth watching, and a film around them that never worked out what else it wanted to be.
The moonshine in the barrel. The best sustained gag in the film is also the simplest. Troy “Assassin” Kelly (Ryan Reynolds) is hidden inside the barrel the drink was brewed in while the KGB searches the house, and Nikolai Ustinov (Kenneth Branagh) pours a glass of it for everybody. Troy says it does not taste of beetroot and gets a sincere thank you. The officer says it tastes exactly of beetroot and gets the same thank you, in the same tone. Two opposite verdicts, one man who means it both times, and the film trusts you to spot it without help.
The handshake. Nikolai takes a hand off the wheel and holds it out; Troy, finally ready to be friends, reaches for it; Nikolai was going for the lever. It lasts two seconds and it is the funniest thing here.
The callsign. The reason he is called Assassin is held back almost the whole film and then paid off. It is the one joke with real construction behind it, and it is worth the wait.
Anna. Nikolai's daughter Anna (Maria Bakalova) comes out to him in the middle of an escape, and the scene sits oddly. The timing is wrong, the film is mid-chase, and the emotional beat lands sideways. Her decision to stay behind rather than take the way out is the stronger half of it, and the film moves on from that faster than it should.
The parade. They come out of the blacksite into a May Day parade and leave it in a nuclear missile launcher taken off the procession, and that is the point where the film drops any pretence of being plausible and simply becomes fun. It is also the single most embarrassing thing that could happen to a country in public. The film does not care, and on its terms it is right not to.
The landing. The plane is dead-stick over the Baltic and Troy will not put it down until the State Department grants Nikolai asylum. It is the first time the film asks you to feel something instead of laugh, and it works — because of the ninety minutes of small steps behind it rather than anything in the scene itself. Then Troy mentions the reserve tank, and the film takes the sacrifice back for a laugh.
The letter. Home again, Troy tells a Navy hearing that he is holding a copy of what the government knew about the shipyard that is killing his father, Harold Kelly (David Morse). That is the film's real argument arriving late: he does not stop loving his country, he starts holding it to account. Then it finishes somewhere much sillier, with Nikolai and his first Big Mac and an invitation to drive across America in a camper van — a door left open so plainly that a sequel would surprise nobody.
Bright Bulbs
- Nikolai Ustinov (Kenneth Branagh) is assembled entirely out of American films, and Branagh plays that belief straight rather than playing it stupid.
- The friendship is built in small steps across the whole film, so the warmth at the end feels earned instead of scheduled.
- The last act finally stops explaining itself and moves, and the direction turns out to be much better than the dialogue.
Dull Bulbs
- Alexander Volkov (Marcin Dorociński) does everything a Cold War villain must do and nothing whatsoever that you will remember.
- The plot is one straight line out of Russia. It is enough to hang jokes on and it is never anything more than that.
- Troy “Assassin” Kelly (Ryan Reynolds) is on well-practised autopilot, and only comes alive when the script stops handing him jokes.
Shattered Bulbs
- The middle hour coasts. The film has already made its joke about Nikolai and America by then, and it just keeps making it.
Cast
- Ryan Reynolds as Troy “Assassin” Kelly
- Kenneth Branagh as Nikolai Ustinov
- Maria Bakalova as Anna Ustinov
- Marcin Dorociński as Alexander Volkov
- David Morse as Harold Kelly