'Mayday' Review: A Charming and Fun Buddy-Comedy Throwback on Apple TV
- 7 minutes ago
- 4 min read
By Dan Bremner - September 6, 2026
The new Apple Original action-comedy from Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, starring Ryan Reynolds. The moment I heard Mayday was a streaming original with Reynolds attached, my expectations dropped through the floor. There appears to be an ongoing competition between Reynolds, Mark Wahlberg and occasionally Chris Evans to see who can appear in the largest volume of unremarkable content. As a big fan of Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves (a film that still deserved a sequel), I was mildly curious. The promise of Kenneth Branagh doing a silly accent also helped. That particular combination has never been a negative in my book.
I feel like I’ve been saying this a lot lately, but Mayday turned out to be a very fun throwback to the silly buddy-comedies of the 80s and 90s. It isn’t ground-breaking, yet Goldstein and Daley bring enough energy that the kinetic action mostly works, the humour lands more often than not (when Reynolds isn’t improvising), and Branagh is an absolute delight. I went in expecting the worst and ended up having a genuinely fun, occasionally charming time. The biggest shame about this is that it was dumped on streaming, when it would have made for a nice little post-summer theatrical release.
The lead chemistry is the film’s strongest asset. Reynolds’ hotshot Navy pilot Troy “Assassin” Kelly and Branagh’s gruff ex-KGB agent Nikolai “Nick” Ustinov form an infectious mismatched duo. Their bickering, timing and slowly evolving odd-couple relationship carry large stretches of the film and make it far more entertaining than the premise suggests on paper.
Branagh in particular is excellent. He delivers a superb deadpan comic performance as a heavily bearded Russian hermit who is obsessed with American pop culture, keeps a Top Gun VHS on permanent rotation, and dreams of McDonald’s. He also handles the action surprisingly well, mixing menace, charm and humour while quietly stealing most of the scenes he’s in. It’s the best reason to watch the film and I could not get over just how endearing his character was. And I genuinely hope he gets his late-career John Wick clone at some point soon. He may just have the juice.
What Mayday does best is channel the spirit of classic 1980s and 1990s buddy action-comedies. You can feel the influence of Top Gun, Midnight Run, Lethal Weapon and similar crowd-pleasers. It has that self-aware nostalgia for 80s pop culture, late-Cold-War optimism and the simple pleasure of two very different men forced to work together. It feels like the kind of straightforward cinema entertainment that used to turn up regularly and now mostly lives on streaming. Which is nothing less than a real shame.
The action sequences are solid. The mid-air ejection and parachute sequence, several well-choreographed fights (many of them featuring Branagh), the vehicle chases, a train set-piece and the climax involving a May Day parade and a nuclear missile launcher all have energy and a bit of invention. Nothing redefines the genre, but it’s staged with enough care to stay engaging while the directing duo once again show off their inventive ways of putting the camera in interesting places to pull off kinetic shots within the action.
There’s also a surprising amount of heart. Beneath the jokes and set pieces sits a fairly appealing story about unlikely friendship across cultural and ideological lines, with some notes of family and a gentle “hands across the water” sentiment that softens the Cold War framing. It gives the film a warmth that a lot of pure sarcasm-driven comedies lack, especially when it comes to Nick’s desperation to leave Soviet Russia and the relationship with his estranged daughter. Again, it's nothing ground-breaking, but it is just enough to raise it above pure fluff.
When it comes to the humour, the comedy is more uneven than the action. When it works, it works. There's lots of genuinely funny visual gags (demon child), funny lines and character-based moments. When it leans on Reynolds’ familiar sarcastic one-liners, it starts to feel forced and a little wearying. He is essentially doing another variation of the same performance he’s been giving for years, complete with the usual improvised, occasionally obnoxious asides. It’s hard not to feel that a different lead might have elevated the entire film. Someone like Chris Pine, for instance, could have made this something genuinely special rather than just enjoyable.
Mayday is light, energetic and frequently charming in a way I didn’t expect. A solid throwback buddy action-comedy carried by Branagh’s excellent work, some sharp action and enough genuine chemistry to overcome its more formulaic instincts and Reynolds’ usual bag of tricks. It's no masterpiece, but far better than 99.9% of most streaming originals.
'Mayday' is released on Apple TV on September 4, 2026. Available to stream now. Watch it HERE.
Want more film reviews? Dive into more reviews, rankings, and film conversations on our site. Explore Film Focus Online now!
