Kenneth Branagh: From Shakespeare to the Russian Jackie Chan in Mayday

Somewhere along the way, somebody looked at Sir Kenneth Branagh, one of the most celebrated Shakespearean actors of his generation, and said, “What if we made him the Russian Jackie Chan?” Whoever made that decision deserves a raise, because Mayday is already exactly my kind of movie before Branagh starts beating the hell out of everybody, and then it becomes something even better.

I expected Ryan Reynolds to be the reason this worked. That is not an unreasonable assumption. Put Reynolds in a big, fast action comedy, give him people to shoot at and somebody to annoy, and the machinery is pretty well understood at this point. Instead, Mayday strands his hotshot U.S. Navy pilot Troy “Assassin” Kelly behind enemy lines during the Cold War and introduces him to Nikolai Ustinov, Branagh’s eccentric former KGB agent with a particular fascination with American culture. From there, the movie becomes the kind of mismatched buddy adventure Hollywood used to make all the time and somehow stopped making enough of.

The surprise is that Reynolds is not really the wild card here. Branagh is.

That becomes much funnier when you remember exactly who we are talking about. Branagh’s career has been so intertwined with Shakespeare that the Royal Shakespeare Company says he has worked on 35 Shakespeare productions. Earlier this year, he returned to Stratford-upon-Avon to play Prospero in The Tempest. This is a man associated with Hamlet, Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing and enough prestige drama to fill a very serious bookshelf.

And now he is punching Russians in the face.

That contrast could have been the whole joke, but Branagh does not play it like somebody slumming through an action movie. He commits to it. Nikolai does not just stand around dispensing wisdom until Reynolds gets to do the cool stuff. He fights. A lot. The hand-to-hand sequences are fast, hard and frequently hilarious, with Branagh selling the idea that underneath this strange, charming older guy is somebody you absolutely should not have picked a fight with.

“Russian Jackie Chan” is obviously an exaggeration. Branagh is not suddenly flipping through ladders and jumping off rooftops. What reminded me of Jackie Chan is the pleasure of watching a performer use personality, timing and physical comedy inside the fighting itself. Nikolai is funny while he is dangerous. Half the entertainment comes from Troy realizing, at roughly the same time we do, that this guy is apparently capable of dismantling an entire room.

Does every part of it make perfect sense? Absolutely not. I still have questions about whoever looked around the United States military and decided the guy who looks suspiciously like 49-year-old Ryan Reynolds was the hotshot pilot they needed for this particular mission. Reynolds is in great shape, but at some point I started wondering whether Troy Kelly has been lying on his military paperwork for the last 20 years.

Whatever. I got over it.

Because Mayday understands something increasingly rare about this kind of entertainment: momentum matters. Chemistry matters. Being cool matters. Making the audience laugh and then immediately giving them something exciting to watch matters. Not every movie needs to deconstruct the action genre. Sometimes I just want the action genre.

And apparently what I really wanted was Kenneth Branagh turning into the Russian Jackie Chan.

I did not know that when I pressed play, but I know it now.

VERDICT: HELL YEAH

Mayday is streaming now on Apple TV.