No, ‘Mayday’s Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh Aren’t Just Pretending to Be Friends

So there’s no reason to assume that the camaraderie fueling Mayday,Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh’s exuberant new ‘80s-throwback action-comedy on Apple TV, has anything to do with real life. The movie follows, in Reynolds’ own words, “a guy who lives in the woods like Ted Kaczynski, whose only movie that he watches over and over again is Top Gun on a bootleg VHS” — that would be Branagh’s Nikolai, a kind-hearted, Americana-obsessed ex-KGB agent living an isolated life in rural Russia. “And then as far as he's concerned, Maverick has just been shot out of the sky and falls down into his yard” — that would be Troy, Reynolds’ hotshot Navy pilot, whose plane crashes during a top-secret mission and suddenly has to make his way home through enemy territory during the final days of the Cold War.