Mayday is a new straight-to-streaming Cold War action comedy from Apple. Stark has a theory that movies like Mayday represent an entirely new genre, one not defined by type, but the following criteria:
“Movies which, if I had given up an evening to go to the movie theatre and paid $12 for a ticket for, would make me absolutely furious. But because I watched it on my couch, with a beer, with it included in my existing subscriptions, I thoroughly enjoyed every damn minute of it.”
Let’s just call them ‘couch movies.’ Recent examples include Heads of State, The Wrecking Crew, Balls Up, Deep Cover and Fountain of Youth.
Are these straight-to-streaming couch movies the modern equivalent of the direct-to-video (DTV) movies of yore? Superficially maybe, in that they come with lower expectations compared to theatrical releases that means you might glean some enjoyment out of them even if they aren’t great.
But key differences exist. Watching a couch movie requires even less effort than a DTV movie. You don’t have to leave the house or pay for it. Sure, you’re paying for the subscription, but you would have been paying that anyway. So it’s free, kind of.
Does that lower the bar for enjoyment even further? I think so.
The other huge difference is that these couch movies have BUDGET! The best acting talent you could hope for in a DTV actioner back in the day was Treat Williams, Michael Dudikoff or Cynthia Rothrock. Mayday stars Hollywood A-lister Ryan Reynolds and academy award winner Kenneth Branagh. I’m not saying they are better than those other guys, but they sure are more expensive.
John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein direct Mayday (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves). The production values are high, the scale is large, particularly towards the end, and the special effects are (mostly) impressive.
Boxing Day
But the question remains: are couch movies just highly polished turds that we give a free pass to because all we had to do was press ‘play’ on a remote control?
Perhaps, but I’ll try not to do that. I enjoyed Mayday, but if I take a step back and subject it to a higher level of scrutiny, it has a few issues. But maybe…just maybe…that shouldn’t stop you from enjoying it in the moment.
Mayday is set in 1987 and stars Ryan Reynolds as navy pilot Troy Kelly, who gets shot down over Russia while on a secret reconnaissance mission in this bad boy:
To be fair to Troy, he is merely the navigator. Blame the expendable pilot for getting the fastest plane in history shot down by MIGs.
Troy is rescued by Russian loner Nicolai Ustinov (Branagh) who lives in the wilderness and just happens to be obsessed with the movie Top Gun (he owns a bootleg) and America in general.
Branagh sports a magnificent head of hair and beard and appears to be morphing into Ewan McGregor (or is it the other way around?). He is also the MVP of this movie: quiet, funny, understated, but possessing a particular set of skills and a dark past that he’s trying to forget. He handles action well and the fight scenes are well choreographed.
Kenneth Branagh – action hero. I did not have that on my 2026 movie bingo card.
New Year’s Day
What follows is a pretty good chase movie with Nicolai and Troy heading for the American embassy in Moscow while being pursued by the KGB. We get several serviceable action set pieces along the way.
Reynolds brings his usual quip-heavy sarcasm, which may tell you up-front if Mayday is for you. Personally I like it, and the pair make a good double act. But it isn’t all lightness and fun.
Troy and Nicolai have to contend with their distrust for each other, not only as individuals but as representatives of their respective countries and ideologies. Troy’s character arc involves coming to the realisation that America isn’t perfect, and that good Russians exist.
That may sound like woke horseshit, but it doesn’t come across like that. Mayday doesn’t go as far as recommending communism, thank God (I feared it might at one point). The Commies are still the bad guys; it just makes the point that at the individual level, good people like Nicolai can exist in bad places. It’s hardly deep, but it’s something.
The question of whether Troy can fulfil his promise of asylum for Nicolai and his daughter is a source of credible tension and leads to an engaging third act with some surprising emotional beats and large-scale action.
M’aidez
Given what I said above about couch movies, I will attempt to hold Mayday to a higher level of scrutiny than a couch movie would usually invite. So here are a few quibbles.
A pit-stop to pick up Nicolai’s daughter Anna (Maria Bakalova) gave me hope for a romantic subplot between her and Troy, and possibly another source of tension between Troy and Nicolai. However, she immediately tells Troy she is gay.
Characters make stupid decisions to keep the plot moving at times, and it appears that Mayday has been infected with ‘Netflix Dialogue,’ where characters say things that don’t need to be said. Presumably this is so morons on their phones can keep up.
Case in point: Troy’s nickname is Assassin, but he only tells his close friends why. At the end of the movie, he tells Nicolai the story. It should have been left at that. But Troy then says something along the lines of “I’m telling you this now because I consider us friends.’ Yeah thanks, I got it.
My last complaint concerns the opening shot of the movie. Mayday begins with a seagull or some other bird swooping over the ocean and diving for fish, before an F-18 flies by and frightens it.
Most of the CGI in Mayday is very good, but this moment is so cartoonish it reminded me of Finding Nemo. It may seem like a minor complaint, but CGI like that reminds me that none of this is real and it took me out of the movie before it had even begun.
That said, the F-18 scene that followed it made up for it and looked legit.
Overall
Mayday provides solid entertainment with action, humour and a memorable performance by Kenneth Branagh. Just don’t expect it to change your life or anything. I probably won’t watch it again, but it was an acceptable way to spend a couple of hours on a lazy Friday night.
It’s a couch movie.
