"Mayday" is a goofy, good-natured action movie about an American pilot (Ryan Reynolds) and a former KGB officer (Kenneth Branagh) who run away from the Red Army together. If you're a 1980s cranberry connoisseur, he'll entertain you.translated

A film has been released on Apple TV about the friendship between a downed US Navy pilot and a former KGB officer who are trying to escape from the USSR in 1987. Shakespearean actor Kenneth Branagh again - not for the first time in his career - plays a Soviet citizen, and Ryan Reynolds continues to maintain his usual role. The film was produced by order of Skydance Media, a studio that is rumored to have close ties to the Donald Trump administration. Critic Eduard Zhuravlev talks about how a film in the “Soviet cranberry” genre might look in 2026.

1987 The brave US Navy pilot Troy Kelly (Canadian Ryan Reynolds) agrees to a secret CIA mission - he needs to fly a reconnaissance plane to the Arkhangelsk region to check whether the Soviet leadership is building silo launchers there. The mission ends in failure: the plane is shot down and Troy is forced to eject over the snowy taiga. In the forest, a wounded American is saved by bearded carpenter Nikolai Ustinov (Irishman Kenneth Branagh), a former KGB officer, but an anti-Soviet and a big fan of the action movie Top Gun. Nikolai agrees to help Troy get out, because here the merciless “Red Army”, led by the “chief of internal security”, is already looking for him with all his might...