Review: In Mayday, Ryan Reynolds finds his ultimate odd-couple match in Kenneth Branagh

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Set us as preferred Acting is work, but Kenneth Branagh and Ryan Reynolds appear to be having an absolute blast in Apple TV’s new film “Mayday.” And their enthusiasm is instantly infectious.Though it arrives in the dog days and is set, for large portions, in Siberia and its environs, “Mayday” is pure summer: a classic comedy-adventure buddy film that offers misty-eyed homage to the original “Top Gun” and an equally sentimental pro-glasnost, hands-across-the-water subtext while delivering as much witty dialogue and miraculous escapes as a mercifully under-two-hour movie can hold.Troy Brennan (Reynolds) is a Navy fighter pilot (code name: Assassin) who can, without breaking a sweat, anchor the film firmly in 1987 by ranting about Cabbage Patch dolls before saving a flight exercise from disaster with a cocky and brilliant maneuver.Not surprisingly, he is plucked for a covert mission that involves photographing secret Soviet bases from a tricked-out stealth jet.Alas, like the Titanic, it is apparently not as tricked out or as stealthy as advertised.

Troy has barely snapped a pic before he is forced to parachute into the Siberian wilderness.He awakes to find himself bound to a bed in the cabin of Nikolai Ustinov (Branagh), a Russian Grizzly Adams (a period-appropriate character that is absolutely name-checked) who says to call him Nick.Nick too is a lover of “Top Gun” and all things American.

“I am your biggest fan,” he tells Troy, who may be three years away from watching “Misery” (which served as early inspiration for “Mayday”), but is understandably suspicious given the circumstances, especially when Nick explains that the ropes were necessary to keep Troy still while performing “surgery.” But it’s true and Nick’s delight in tending to his own personal Maverick is sincere.With the Fi...