Mayday review: At first glance, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s Apple TV action comedy Mayday and Oni Sen’s recent Netflix India period war drama Operation Safed Sagar couldn’t be further apart. But the two share one curious narrative starting point. During the 1999 Kargil War, an Indian fighter jet is shot down by the Pakistani army, leading to the pilot finding his way into enemy territory. But imagine if instead of getting captured, tortured, and killed, the Indian fighter jet found an unlikely ally in the enemy country — a Pakistani well-wisher, obsessively in love with India’s culture, economy, and democracy, particularly because they’re under constant threat in his home turf.

That’s exactly how the events transpire in Mayday. US Navy Pilot Troy Kelly (Ryan Reynolds), one of the most accomplished in his squad, is sent on the covert Blackbird mission at the fag end of Cold War. Led by a more senior, cockier co-pilot, his jet is gunned down, leading to him crash-landing in the heart of the Soviet Union. When he wakes up, he finds himself tied to a bed. It’s the nightmare of any solider, any potential Prisoner of War. But what strangely reassures him is being surrounded by symbols of US identity and pride — including a poster of Tony Scott’s 1986 seminal action film Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise as Maverick, his fictional fellow US Navy aviator.

Enter: Nikolai Ustinov (Kenneth Branagh), a former KGB officer, who hung up his American ass-kicking boots a decade ago. Why? Because he fell in love with anything and everything American, including McDonalds, which “I’ve never had, but I suspect would love it.” Kenneth’s Russian accent isn’t as dense, which can be attributed to his swelling American dream, but it’s certainly consistent and effective. It helps that Ryan Reynolds’ accent is standard North American, despite his Canadian origins, which serves as the polar opposite to his new, unlikely Soviet ally.

Kenneth Branagh and Ryan Reynolds in Mayday.

What follows is a gauntlet run that directors Daley and Goldstein are well familiar with, given their last hit, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. The adventurous obstacles — a moving train, a captivity escape, and a chase sequence involving a nuclear missile — are no different from the board game-style Forgotten Realms setting of Dungeons & Dragons. Russia is painted in fantastical broad strokes instead of a lived-in portrait, which doesn’t jar because Reynolds’ character feels exactly like that — an American spy in Soviet wonderland. The special effects and action sequences are right up there with any Ryan Reynolds action comedy, except that the actor is fittingly less verbose here.

Reynolds’ signature no-holds-barred, gag-a-second personality has breathed life into blockbuster franchises like Deadpool, but his character is dealing with a different kind of gag in his mouth here. He can’t shoot one trademark gag after another because he’s gagged by his tricky identity in a trickier terrain. So, he mostly reacts — as Branagh’s Nick (yes, he hates to be referred to as his full Russian identity) — takes the lead. Though Nick does offer a quick brief into the Russian culture and way of living, it’s best to be taken as a second-hand brochure given the dominant American gaze. Even their respective claims about “not all Americans/Russians are bad” seem too superfluous, but nonetheless worth reminding in the increasingly intolerant times of today.

Mayday and Operation Safed Sagar may be on the opposite ends of the spectrum, when it comes to realism. But at the end of the day, both endorse the same political standpoint — harmony over distrust, peace over war. Of course, there’s an ex-KGB officer madly in love with the US, but no American soldier justifying its enemy’s excesses. But the arc of Reynolds’ Troy demonstrates how if Americans — who consider themselves a superior race by any stretch — even come one step closer to being a comrade to the rest of the world, they’d be far better off. If there’s one unarguably worthy takeaway from the film, it’s comradeship. A former Soviet defence personnel turns out to be more of a comrade to Troy than his fellow Navy pilot who leads him to die in a crashing jet.

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There are a few forgettable side plots in Mayday — particularly the ones that have to do with Troy and his terminally ill father and Nick and his estranged daughter (Anna Bakalova) — but they’re just minor attempts to complement the spine of the story. But that’s best reflected in a highly improbable, yet deeply satisfying flight of fancy towards the end. Ensuring his newly found comrade, the unlikely Goose to his Maverick, is protected by America, Troy says, “The only way to stand up for my country is to stand up to it.” And that makes Mayday worth watching. Advocating peace as patriotism in the face of one of the longest soft wars between the world’s two most powerful nations is, even at its safest, what Kenny Loggins would describe by belting out, “Highway to the danger zone!”