John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein's smart, fun action comedy is doing numbers on Apple TV, but really belongs on a big screen. Accelerated by artificial intelligence and an indefatigable firehose of content, the uncanny valley between real blockbusters and fake ones is disappearing at an exponential pace. Ten years ago, or even five, a movie like “Mayday” would have arrived in theaters, impressed audiences and entered the canon of slight but engaging fare to watch on repeat whenever it gets broadcast on networks like TNT.
Today, it debuts as the #1 film on Apple TV, but seems likely to be forgotten by the time its premiere weekend ends. And that’s a shame, because it’s actually pretty good. Starring Ryan Reynolds as a U.S.
Navy pilot rescued by an ex-KGB agent (Kenneth Branagh) after his spy plane gets shot down over Russia in the waning days of the Cold War, “Mayday” marks the fourth film directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, and it’s a smart, inventive, well-directed action comedy. Bereft of theatrical distribution, it seems slightly doomed to be relegated to the “streaming content” trash heap, even as it shows the kind of filmmaking personality that should be showcased on the biggest screen possible. Reynolds plays Troy Kelly, a man cut in the mold of Tom Cruise’s “Top Gun” character Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, but with a more altruistic streak: When he breaks the rules, it’s to help a fellow pilot land safely on the aircraft carrier from which they’ve been dispatched.
Cultivating such a persona benefits him after he gets shot down over Russia while piloting a spy plane, landing in the arms of Nikolai Ustinov (Branagh), a retired ex-KGB operative who’s obsessed with America (complete with a “Top Gun” poster on the wall of his rustic cabin). Stranded more than 2,000 miles from the nearest international border, Troy quickly discovers that there’s only a slim chance of being rescued, especially with a warmongering KGB agent named Alexander Volkov (Marcin Dorociński) looking to apprehend him. Consequently, Nikolai promises to usher Troy to safe haven in exchange for asylum in the U.S. for himself and his estranged daughter Anna (Maria Bakalova).
The catch is that Troy was operating as part of a secret mission, so it will be an uphill battle to get U.S. leaders to acknowledge his existence at all, much less rescue him. But with Volkov and his literal army of minions hot on his heels, Troy is forced to forge a tenuous partnership with Nikolai in the hopes that they can get to safety at the American consulate in Moscow before being captured or killed. Notwithstanding its preponderance of shots that would be quite literally impossible to film practically (the camera swoops underneath the tires of an SR-71 Blackbird as its taxis, for example), the thing that’s most impressive about “Mayday” is just how cinematic it looks.
Outside of a movie starring Tom Cruise, the likelihood seems low that a production could, say, obtain a decommissioned spy plane and let Ryan Reynolds fly it on camera, yet the dogfights and aerial maneuvring look incredibly convincing. Moreover, Daley and Goldstein, working with cinematographer Barry Peterson (who shot the duo’s previous film, “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves”), make the action not just thrilling but beautiful, with real atmospheric weight for the aircraft as they trace their paths across breathtaking vistas. Politically, the film maintains a divide between the United States and Russia that’s about as complex as the classic action-movie trope “we’re not so different, you and I,” and its intended lessons focus more on empathy and not judging a book by its cover than 1980s international relations.
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