00:00An American fighter pilot gets shot down deep behind Soviet lines.
00:04A retired KGB agent finds them half-dead in the snow.
00:08On paper, one of them should be turning the other one in.
00:12Instead, they end up hijacking a nuclear missile launcher together.
00:16And somehow, that's not even the weirdest part of their road trip.
00:20This is May Day, and it might be the most charming Cold War buddy comedy
00:25you didn't know you needed this year.
00:27Hey everyone! Welcome back to the channel!
00:32If you're new here, this is where we break down the biggest new releases every week.
00:38Plot, ending, reception, all of it.
00:41So if that sounds like your thing, stick around because this one's a fun ride.
00:46Today we're covering May Day, Apple's new action comedy starring Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh,
00:52running just under two hours and rated PG-13 for violence, action, some strong language,
00:58and a bit of Cold War era smoking and innuendo for flavor.
01:02Let's get into it!
01:04It's 1987, and Navy Lieutenant Troy Kelly, call sign Assassin.
01:13Played by Ryan Reynolds, is exactly the kind of hotshot pilot you'd expect from someone with a nickname like that.
01:20After proving himself in a tense carrier landing at the start of the film,
01:24Troy gets tapped for a top-secret mission,
01:27flying second seat alongside Air Force Major Sanders in an SR-71 Blackbird spy plane,
01:34slipping over Soviet territory to capture surveillance photos nobody's supposed to know about.
01:39The mission falls apart fast.
01:43A mid-air collision with a Soviet MiG-29 forces Troy to eject,
01:49killing Major Sanders in the process and leaving Troy badly injured, alone,
01:55and stranded deep in the Soviet wilderness with no way home,
01:59and no one who even knows he's alive out there.
02:04He's found by Nikolai Ostinov, played by Kenneth Branagh,
02:08a former KGB agent who walked away from the organization because he stopped believing in what it stood for,
02:14and who spent his retirement quietly obsessing over American culture from the middle of nowhere in Russia.
02:21His cabin is stuffed with American paraphernalia,
02:25and his favorite movie, fittingly, is Top Gun.
02:30Troy's first instinct is to run and find his own way to the American embassy,
02:36but he quickly realizes he won't survive five minutes out here without Nikolai's help.
02:41So the two of them strike a deal.
02:44Troy promises to secure Nikolai political asylum in the United States.
02:49If Nikolai gets him safely across enemy territory to the embassy in Moscow, thousands of miles away.
02:57It's the setup for exactly the kind of mismatched road trip this genre thrives on,
03:03and the film wastes no time throwing obstacles at them.
03:06Starting with a plan to reach a high-ranking KGB officer's country house near Lake Vosje,
03:12where an untraceable phone line gives them their first real shot at contacting the embassy.
03:18Of course, it's never that simple.
03:21Alexander Volkov, played by Marcin Doroshevsky,
03:25a rogue KGB officer hunting Troy on his own agenda,
03:30intercepts a record of that call,
03:32and realizes exactly where the two of them are headed.
03:36Reviewers have specifically praised Doroshevsky for underplaying what could easily have been
03:40a completely one-note, stereotypical Russian villain,
03:44giving Volkov just enough restraint to make him feel like a genuine threat rather than a cartoon.
03:50What follows is a genuinely wild stretch of the film,
03:55a harrowing train ride,
03:56a growing, grudging friendship between Troy and Nikolai,
04:00and an eventual arrival in Moscow,
04:03just as the city gears up for its massive annual May Day military parade.
04:09Before things escalate that far,
04:11they make a stop at the home of Nikolai's estranged daughter Anna,
04:16played by Maria Bakalova,
04:18a human rights activist who's had to go into hiding because of her work,
04:22and whose relationship with her father is nowhere near as warm as Nikolai clearly wishes it were.
04:30Volkov's agents track them there and attack the apartment,
04:34forcing all three to flee to one of Anna's safe houses.
04:39And along the way, Anna opens up to Troy about who she really is,
04:44adding a genuinely human beat to all the chaos happening around them.
04:49Bakalova doesn't get a huge amount of screen time,
04:52but reviewers have pointed to her scenes as some of the film's most quietly effective,
04:58giving Nikolai's whole character an emotional weight
05:01that a pure buddy-comedy plot wouldn't have earned on its own.
05:05The next morning,
05:07Troy finally makes contact to arrange the embassy handoff,
05:11only to learn something devastating.
05:14The American Consul General is refusing to grant Nikolai asylum at all
05:19because of his KGB past.
05:22Troy doesn't tell him the truth.
05:25Nikolai finds out anyway,
05:26overhearing the call himself,
05:28and it breaks something between them.
05:31Feeling completely betrayed by the one person he trusted enough to risk everything for,
05:36Nikolai makes a desperate, wounded choice,
05:39and hands Troy directly over to Volkov,
05:42instead of finishing the drive to the embassy.
05:44Here's where the film's comedy gives way to its sharpest gut punch.
05:50Volkov brings both men in for interrogation,
05:53trying to strong-arm them into signing a false confession,
05:56claiming Troy was actually sent to assassinate the Soviet president.
06:01When that doesn't crack him,
06:03Volkov goes for something far more personal,
06:06revealing that the United States government knowingly exposed shipyard workers,
06:11including Troy's own father,
06:13to cancer-causing asbestos for decades at a Navy shipyard back home,
06:18all while insisting it was safe.
06:21It's the exact kind of blind, patriotic certainty
06:25Troy walked into this mission with,
06:27and watching it collapse in real time
06:29becomes the film's genuine emotional pivot.
06:32That revelation is also what finally snaps Nikolai back onto Troy's side.
06:38He grabs a pen and stabs Volkov with it,
06:41and the two of them break free together,
06:43stealing nothing less than a mobile nuclear missile launcher
06:47right off the May Day parade route to make their escape.
06:51In the middle of all that chaos,
06:54Troy finally tells Nikolai the real,
06:57dumb, deeply anticlimactic reason
07:00behind his assassin, Kalzine,
07:02and it's exactly the kind of moment
07:04that fully repairs their friendship
07:06right when the story needs it to.
07:09They make a break for the airport
07:11and hijack a commercial plane to get out,
07:14only for Volkov,
07:16somehow still alive and still coming,
07:19to catch up and board as they're taking off.
07:22He doesn't make it,
07:23thrown from the plane mid-flight
07:25in the film's last real burst of action.
07:27With Finland too far to read safely,
07:31Troy makes a call that defines his whole arc.
07:33He refuses to let the plane land anywhere
07:36unless the U.S. actually grants Nikolai real,
07:39permanent asylum this time,
07:41no loopholes.
07:43It works.
07:44They touch down safely aboard the USS Carl Vinson,
07:48asylum secured for real.
07:50The film doesn't stop at the rescue either.
07:54Afterward, Troy testifies in front of Congress
07:56about the asbestos cover-up he learned about
07:59during that interrogation,
08:01exposing the Navy's decades of knowing negligence,
08:04and it costs him his career,
08:06getting released from service
08:08as a direct result of speaking up.
08:10The last we see of Troy and Nikolai,
08:14they're sharing a meal at McDonald's,
08:16of all places,
08:17casually talking about taking a trip together,
08:20the exact kind of quiet,
08:23earned friendship the whole film
08:25has been building toward.
08:28Stick around after the credits too.
08:31There's a genuinely funny mid-credits scene
08:33playing as fake CCTV footage,
08:36finally showing the actual,
08:38embarrassing physical mishap
08:40behind Troy's call sign,
08:42and it's exactly as anticlimactic and funny
08:45as the build-up throughout the film
08:47promises it'll be.
08:49What's genuinely interesting about May Day
08:51is how unexpectedly pacifist its message is
08:55for an action movie built around a nuclear missile heist
08:59and a hijacked plane.
09:01Writers and directors Jonathan Goldstein
09:04and John Francis Daly have said
09:06they were drawn back to this specific moment in history
09:09because it still has something to say right now.
09:12A story about two men from opposite sides
09:15of a supposedly unbridgeable ideological divide
09:18finding common ground,
09:19and each of them individually learning
09:22to stop blindly trusting the institution
09:24they'd once have died for.
09:27Critically,
09:28the film has landed in solidly positive territory,
09:31sitting at 80% on rotten tomatoes
09:33from over 70 critics,
09:35with an average score of 6.3 out of 10,
09:38while Metacritic puts it at a more modest 60 out of 100.
09:42Right in mixed or average territory,
09:45Variety was especially warm on it,
09:47calling it a smart, inventive, well-directed throwback
09:52with surprising heart,
09:54comparing it favorably to a latter-day Top Gun riff
09:57crossed with a Buddy Road movie.
10:00Several reviews singled out Kenneth Branagh specifically,
10:03with more than one critic saying
10:05he steals nearly every scene he's in,
10:07bringing genuine action chops
10:09to a genre nobody really expected from him.
10:11Reaction to Reynolds was a little more divided.
10:15Some reviews enjoying his usual sarcastic charm here,
10:19while others felt like they've simply seen
10:22this exact version of him
10:23one too many times at this point.
10:26Not every critic was fully sold, either.
10:30The Hollywood Reporter called it a formulaic but fun throwback
10:34rather than anything groundbreaking.
10:36And a few reviewers noted the film
10:38probably deserved a real theatrical release
10:41rather than landing straight on a streaming service,
10:44arguing the production values and aerial sequences
10:48were genuinely impressive enough
10:50to justify a big screen.
10:53One particularly sharp piece of criticism
10:55pointed out something a little unsettling
10:58about the current media landscape,
11:00that a well-made, mid-budget original like this one
11:03risks getting lost and forgotten within days,
11:07simply because it debuted on a streaming service
11:09instead of in theaters,
11:11even while topping the Apple TV charts
11:14the same week it dropped.
11:16Behind the scenes,
11:17this marks the fourth collaboration
11:19between directing duo Jonathan Goldstein
11:21and John Francis Daly,
11:23following Game Night, Vacation,
11:26and their Dungeons & Dragons adaptation.
11:28And it's also notable as the first time
11:31Reynolds and Daly have worked together
11:32since both starred in the 2005 comedy Waiting.
11:36Production kicked off in Montreal
11:38under the working title Blackbird
11:39back in March of 2024,
11:41before wrapping up its final stretch
11:43of filming in Budapest.
11:46Apple's marketing has leaned into genre comparisons
11:49to films like Tetris, Argueal, The Instigators,
11:53and The Family Plan,
11:55positioning Mayday alongside its own growing catalog
11:59of glossy, star-driven original action pictures.
12:03One small but well-loved detail from reviewers,
12:07a sequence involving a hiding spot inside a wine cellar
12:10and a suspicious Russian official,
12:12got specifically singled out
12:14as one of the film's best moments,
12:16less because of the danger involved
12:18and more because of how well Goldstein and Daly
12:21know exactly when to let a scene breathe
12:24instead of escalating into another action set piece.
12:27It's the kind of small-scale, character-driven beat
12:31that critics say elevates Mayday a notch
12:34above a purely disposable action comedy.
12:38So here's what we want to know.
12:40Did Nikolai make the right call
12:42handing Troy over after feeling betrayed?
12:45Or was that the one moment in the film
12:47where his character actually let you down?
12:50Reasonable people seem genuinely split on this one.
12:54Some viewers see it as a completely understandable
12:57human reaction to betrayal.
12:59Others think it undercuts everything
13:01the film built up about him beforehand.
13:04And be honest,
13:06are you Team Branagh
13:07or Team Reynolds in this one?
13:10Let us know in the comments.
13:11If you enjoyed this Mayday breakdown,
13:14go ahead and subscribe
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13:17Drop a like if it helped you decide whether to watch.
13:20And tell us in the comments
13:21what you want us covering next.
13:22We'll see you in the next one.
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