Mayday (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

Mayday

MAYDAY (2026)

Starring Ryan Reynolds, Kenneth Branagh, David Morse, Maria Bakalova, Wendy Crewson, Louis Cancelmi, Clark Johnson, Alex Mallari Jr., Donald Sales, Marcin Dorocinski, Alex Ozerov-Meyer, Lovell Adams-Gray, Arthur Holden, Christian Jadah, Erniel Baez, Patrick Kerton, Joey Coleman, Andrei Kovski, Lorrie Odom, Aleksandra Kimaeva and the voice of Art Kulik.

Screenplay by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein.

Directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein.

Distributed by Apple TV+. 110 minutes. Rated PG-13.

I lived through the 1980s, so I know that the people who made Mayday pretty much learned about the 1980s through Top Gun and VH1’s I Love the 80s. And maybe also Freaks and Geeks, which was where co-writer and co-director John Francis Daley first gained fame as one of the main actors. In fairness, Daley was about four years old when the 1980s ended, so he never really lived the 1980s experience except on TV, and that shows in Mayday. His longtime filmmaking partner Jonathan Goldstein was 21 years old as the 1980s came to an end, so he should know better.

Mayday is one of those films where everything that happened in the decade is thrown into a blender and becomes generically 1980s – no matter when it actually happened. (See also: The Goldbergs.) For example, in the first ten minutes of the film, the film tosses out supposedly clever dialogue about “timely” stuff like Cabbage Patch dolls (although this film takes place in 1987, four years after the craze and at a point where they could barely give the things away), and the Iran hostage crisis (which took place in 1979-1980 and ended in January 1981). In fact, they show Ronald Reagan giving a speech about the hostages on a hospital TV as our hero is being discharged – even though they’d been released for six and a half years at that point. What, was it a rerun?

The music of Mayday also includes such slightly-outdated hits as Van Halen’s “Jump” (1984), Animotion’s “Obsession” (1985) and three songs from Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA album (1984).

Am I being nit-picky? Perhaps. The makers of Mayday will undoubtedly insist that many people would not know these facts or dates, and they may be right. However, those of us who do know them will become actively annoyed at these kinds of anachronisms. Let’s face it, it’s not like 1987 didn’t have plenty of historical and pop cultural references to grab onto. How about Whitney Houston, Baby Jessica, ACT UP, Spuds McKenzie, acid-washed jeans, hair metal and Fatal Attraction? Do a Google search, guys.

And, in fairness, Mayday does revolve around – although in a sort of lightweight way – the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union, which was very much a hot-button issue of 1987.

But it’s really mostly trying to be a goofier version of Top Gun – which for the record came out in 1986 – if Tom Cruise were shot down behind the Iron Curtain and was taken in by a slightly nicer, Russian version of Kathy Bates in Misery. (Misery the movie is from 1990, but the novel it was based on is from 1987, so good for them on that one…)

Now, maybe my biggest issue with Mayday is that it is obviously in love and in awe of Top Gun – they show scenes from the earlier movie, posters and name check it several times. Nikolai even has a black-market pirated VHS copy of the movie, which he swears he has watched a hundred times.

Unfortunately, I always kind of hated that movie.

I’ve written before about my complicated relationship with Top Gun. I disliked the original’s jingoistic swagger, but I was pleasantly surprised by how Top Gun: Maverick deepened the character and grounded the story. Mayday, unfortunately, seems to idolize the wrong film. It borrows the surface‑level machismo of 1986 without enough of the emotional growth of 2022.

Ryan Reynolds takes the Cruise role as Lt. Troy “Assassin” Kelly, a US superstar air-fighter who is shot down during a stealth mission over the skies of the USSR. His co-pilot is killed and he is badly injured in the crash.

In fairness, once we are in the Soviet Union the anachronisms are no longer as big an issue – because Russia in the 1980s is essentially the US in the 1950s.

The Russian man who saves him is Nikolai (played by that well-known Russian thespian Kenneth Branagh). He is a reformed former KGB operative who is obsessed with the US. He may be nice, he may be mad, but he is a kick-ass fighter. (Kenneth Branagh???) Nikolai tries to convince the pilot to stay with him because the KGB will be searching for him, but he acts so creepy that his motives always seem a bit sketchy.

Tear down this wall, indeed.

Branagh is actually quite likable in the role of Nikolai, even though he is a very odd choice for this kind of role and looks kind of ridiculous in the fight scenes. (Fun bit of probably unanswerable trivia: Nikolai’s last name is Ustinov. Is that a nod to Peter Ustinov, who played detective Hercule Poirot on film, just like Branagh has, or is that just a coincidence?)

Eventually, the military comes for them, and they must go on the run in search of a way to contact the US Embassy. They go on a tour of Russia (well, really Hungary pretending to be Russia) and meet up with friendly villagers, dangerous bar toughs, deadly soldiers and Nikolai’s estranged freedom fighter daughter.

Tonally, Mayday is all over the place – sometimes it is a goofy comedy, sometimes it’s a wild action film, sometimes it is a drama about two men (and two societies) coming to understand and trust each other. There are even a few relatively sophisticated cultural and political debates. The problem is it doesn’t land on anything for long, nor does it work all that well at any of those aspects, and the film never allows any of its genres to breathe.

So instead we get a puree of ideas and moods that eventually is as heavy and unappetizing as borscht. By the time the guys are fleeing across Moscow during the annual May Day parade in a pilfered atomic missile transport, any hope of storytelling glasnost is long gone.

I won’t tell you if the guys escape the Soviet bloc to freedom (although I think you can make a pretty safe guess). Nor will I tell you if Troy and Nikolai ever truly come to understand the worlds that each other have sprung up from.

But as long as the world has Top Gun in common, all things are possible – at least in the fractured logic of Mayday.

Mr. Khrushchev, tear down this movie.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2026 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: September 4, 2026.