Mayday–Top Gun Russian-Style
The year is 1987 during the Cold War. In the buddy comedy Mayday, U.S. Navy pilot Troy “Assassin” Kelly (Ryan Reynolds) has just crashed into a deeply forested remote region of Russia. On a failed covert reconnaissance mission, Troy has to escape before the KGB discovers his whereabouts. He lands unconscious, and is dragged to the survivalist log cabin by Nikolai Ustinov (Kenneth Branaugh), a former KGB officer who looks like the Unibomber. The cabin is covered with posters of “Top Gun” (released the year before). A big fan of “Top Gun” and other American pop culture, “Nick” is no longer KGB. He is motivated to leave the KGB by his daughter who left home after finding out what her father does for a living. In exchange for asylum for him and his daughter, Nick has agreed to help Troy escape.
In this farcical fantasy contrasting American exceptionalism with the fantasies of a Number One Fan, Nikolai, we see a very different realization on the part of Troy. The unshakeable belief in his government’s truth-telling is bitterly betrayed as Troy fights for Nikolai’s asylum.
This iconic 80’s-style comedy includes a beyond-belief bar fight sequence in which Nikolai takes on KGB and other countrymen in a six-to-one battle to save his American friend. But will the American government grant asylum to an ex-KGB agent in 1987?
A thoroughly entertaining film, lighthearted with some superb set designs of 1980’s Top-Gun style aircraft maneuvers and Kremlin tanks, Mayday plays on both meanings of the word: Help (which both main characters are hoping for desperately) and the over-the-top Mayday parade celebrating autocracy and military might in Moscow.
Mayday works because both Kenneth Branaugh and Ryan Reynolds seem to really enjoy seamlessly playing off each other, and in bromance-fashion. Flexing his comedic chops instead of his more high-brow Shakespearean theatrics, Branaugh is outrageous in his physical comedy. Reynolds plays his more everyman persona but here he is a bit more complicated in his political quandary of Cold War values.
Good family-night movie for teenagers and adults. Younger children may not be so interested.
Availability: Apple+