Mayday Review: Two Great Actors, One Thin Story

Yes, Mayday is worth watching, for the pairing. Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh are very good company in John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein's Cold War buddy comedy, and the action is shot with a confidence the script does not deserve. The story underneath is thin, and the audience has noticed. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 83 percent from 106 reviews. Our rating is 6 out of 10.

Spoiler-free verdict: Watch it for the two of them. A 111-minute action comedy with Ryan Reynolds as a stranded US Navy pilot and Kenneth Branagh as the ex-KGB agent who picks him up, released by Apple TV in September 2026. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 83 percent from 106 critic reviews. You need no plot summary before pressing play.

What Mayday is about

In 1987, US Navy Lieutenant Troy Kelly rescues a wingman who cannot land on an aircraft carrier. Two years later the same pilot is flying an SR-71 Blackbird on a secret reconnaissance run over Russia with Major Sanders, gets bounced by a MiG, watches Sanders die, and then flies his blackbird into the other fighter to take it out before ejecting into a forest.

That is where he meets Nikolai Ustinov (Kenneth Branagh), a former KGB officer who left the service, worships American culture and has no legal way out of Russia. Troy wants extraction. Ustinov wants asylum. Volkov (Marcin Dorociński), the KGB man who knows Ustinov's daughter Anna (Maria Bakalova), has other plans. The film moves from a forest to a train to a dacha to Moscow, and ends at an American aircraft carrier.

Cast and performances

Reynolds plays Troy with the fast, sarcastic register he has made his own, and the film's best joke is that the character's call sign is a gag rather than a threat. Branagh plays Ustinov as a cheerful, wheezing cynic who is delighted by absolutely everything American and slightly embarrassed by everything else, and his gruffness lands better than the script earns. The Age's Jared Richards noticed exactly what the pair are doing: "Ryan Reynolds' perma-Deadpool edge of slick sarcasm isn't for me, but it's put to great use in this Cold War buddy comedy from Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley."

Marcin Dorociński gives Volkov the only genuinely threatening performance in the picture, and Maria Bakalova plays Anna with a directness that the script earns late and the film spends early. David Morse, as Troy's father Harold, has a few minutes and turns them into the reason the whole movie is about something.

What works

The action. Barry Peterson's photography and the editing make the jump from a moving train and the MiG dogfight over Russia look like an event rather than a sequence. The Australian's Jill Rowbotham, who gave the film three stars, caught the balance of the whole picture in one line: "Ignore the loose knitting and Mayday is OK entertainment for a lazy Sunday."

The pairing. Variety India's Jinal Bhatt called it "the match-step bromance between Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh, in a film that's written to let them play to their strengths", and named the 1980s nostalgia as the other half of the deal: "the 'Top Gun' nods and 80s nostalgia ultimately make this a fun flight worth taking." Collider's Aidan Kelley was blunter and more generous, writing that "Reynolds and Branagh are an excellent duo, the action set pieces they star in are even more excellent".

What doesn't

The story. The Playlist's Rodrigo Perez put it as the film's central limitation: "The movie remains silly, familiar, and ultimately lacking in substantial depth." TheWrap's Matt Goldberg gave the film three stars and said "The new Daley & Goldstein isn't the most narratively audacious movie", while conceding that it is "a strong reminder that even a streaming comedy can look as good as any blockbuster". Those two sentences are the review in miniature, and the good half is about the photography.

The third act. The film stacks escapes on escapes, and by the time the two leads are stealing a plane the audience has stopped asking where they are going. The Bangkok Post's Tatat Bunnag summed up the experience of it: "I had a good time with Mayday."

The lecture. Ustinov's affection for America is a good joke the first time and a running gag by the fourth, and the film keeps going back to it when it should be moving the plot.

What audiences say

All figures checked on October 22, 2026. Rotten Tomatoes has the film at 83 percent from 106 critic reviews, with a Popcornmeter of 69 percent from 1,000-plus ratings. Metacritic has a Metascore of 60 from 24 critic reviews, labelled Mixed or Average, plus a user score of 6.4 from 83 user ratings. Letterboxd's member average is a weighted 3.15 from 75,677 ratings, with 85,730 members having watched it and 18,506 liking it, and the film sitting in 12,129 member lists. TMDB has it at 7.9 from 986 votes. We do not quote IMDb here, because the site blocks our checks.

Those Letterboxd and Rotten Tomatoes numbers are the story of this film's reception. Eighty-three percent from 106 critics sits next to a 69 percent Popcornmeter, and a 3.15 on Letterboxd from more than 75,000 ratings says the audience mostly agreed with the mixed reviews rather than with the good ones. Critics liked the craft, viewers wanted a story.

Where to watch Mayday

JustWatch, which checked 376 streaming services on October 22, 2026, lists Mayday in the United States on Apple TV and the Apple TV Amazon Channel, both as a subscription with no rental or purchase option. There is no free tier. The certificate is PG-13, and TMDB gives the runtime as 111 minutes, one minute longer than JustWatch's listing.

Current availability, cast details and member reviews sit on our Mayday streaming options and member reviews page.

Verdict

Is Mayday worth watching? Yes, for the two stars and the photography, which is a legitimate reason to spend 111 minutes. The Hollywood Reporter's Frank Scheck called it "an entertaining diversion, thanks to the mismatched-buddy comic chemistry of the two leads", and that is the right size for the thing. What the film has is a great idea, two performers who know exactly what the idea is worth, and a plot that runs out of road. Six out of 10.

Spoiler warning: the ending of Mayday

The embassy tells Troy over the phone that it will not grant asylum to Ustinov, and Troy agrees to meet them anyway without telling Nick, which is the one thing Nick cannot forgive. He hands Troy to Volkov. In the interrogation room Troy is shown a memo proving the Navy knowingly exposed its shipyard workers to asbestos, the disease that killed his father, and he refuses to sign a confession. Ustinov signs, then drives the pen through Volkov's hand, and the two of them take a mobile nuclear launcher and run.

They steal an ATR 42 at the airport. Volkov manages to board before they take off, and Troy throws him off the plane. The damaged aircraft cannot reach Finland, so Troy talks the USS Carl Vinson, then in its own manoeuvres, into taking them aboard, and negotiates immunity for Ustinov as the price. Ustinov's daughter Anna comes back into his life, and he goes to America with a plan to fix it.

Troy testifies to Congress about the asbestos memo and is put on indefinite leave from the Navy. The last scene is Troy and Ustinov at a McDonald's, eating, and talking about taking a road trip across America in the old man's motorhome.