At first glance, Mayday—the new Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh film that started streaming today on Apple TV+—appears to be a familiar piece of action-comedy comfort food: wisecracks, explosions and Russian bad guys.
Look a little closer, though, past the barrage of sexual jokes and Top Gun nods, and the movie is playing with something more unexpectedly textured: the old ideological clash between Eastern collectivism and Western individualism. Mayday never quite musters the nerve to offer a serious critique of America, but it does land one sharp, well-timed jab at the country’s “every man for himself” mindset.
Written and directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, the filmmaking team behind Game Night and the recent Dungeons and Dragons movie, Mayday casts Reynolds as Troy, a U.S. Navy pilot who crash-lands behind enemy lines in Soviet Russia in 1987, during the Gorbachev era of the Cold War. Troy is proudly patriotic, fiercely pro-capitalism and, as expected from an American serviceman in this kind of story, deeply opposed to repressive Russian communist rule.
“Collectivism is always at the cost of individual freedom,” Troy tells his Army buddies during a boozy night out. The line is hardly subtle—and maybe a bit too polished for a drunk Air Force pilot suddenly waxing philosophical—but it serves a purpose. It lets the audience know that Mayday is at least flirting with the idea of being more than another “Russia bad, America good” action comedy. Whether the film actually subverts that formula is another question; disappointingly, it mostly does not. Still, it adds just enough shading to keep the premise from feeling entirely automatic.
After a spy mission falls apart, Troy ends up wounded and stranded in the isolated home of Russian carpenter Nikolai Ustinov, played by Branagh with a gleefully broad and goofy Russian accent. Nikolai—or “Nick,” as he urges Troy to call him—is enchanted by American capitalism. His favorite movie is Top Gun. He fantasizes about eating McDonalds. More than anything, he wants to move to the United States. So Troy offers him a bargain: help him escape Russia, and he will use his connections to secure Nick legal passage to America. From there, the two tumble into a string of absurd, buddy-comedy misadventures.
One adventure leads them to the home of an impoverished Russian family. Having just escaped another scrape, Troy and Nick are out in the cold, hungry and tired. They need shelter for the night. Despite Troy’s apprehension, Nick knocks on the door of a nearby home, and asks for help. And, to Troy’s shock, it’s that easy. The family takes them in, welcomes them, and feeds them a hot meal. While eating, Nick relays to Troy that family is very poor, and barely has enough food to themselves.
“Then why would they let us in?” Troy asks, bewildered.
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“If someone came to the door in America and asked for help, wouldn’t they be taken in?” Nick replies, still assuming the best about this country he idolizes.
Troy stares at Nick blankly for a moment, before he rushes to say, “Of course they would!” with a nervous chuckle.
The answer satisfies Nick. But the audience hears the joke, thanks to Reynold’s spot-on timing and subtle indicators in his performance.
In fact, Troy is not certain that a stranger would be taken in if they knocked on a door in the U.S. and asked for help. It’s 1987, Reagan is president, greed is good, and a man’s home is his castle. His resources are for him and his family, and no one else. It’s an American homeowner’s right to demand strangers stay off their private property. Sometimes with a gun in hand, if necessary.
This scene is as close as the movie ever gets to an endorsement of collectivism and an indictment of individualism. Later, Troy will admit his country isn’t “perfect,” but doesn’t really go into details as to why that is. But this one small moment says so much. If not for the spirit of collectivism, of sharing resources—the same ideas Troy dismissed at the beginning of the film—Troy may not have made it out of Russia alive.
In the end, Mayday still indulges in the “evil Russian villain” trope. But thanks to that one perfect joke, it does so with considerable more nuance than the vast majority of American action flicks. For a Ryan Reynolds comedy, funded by one of America’s biggest corporations, that’s pretty impressive.