The buddy-action movie has survived countless variations because there are few formulas more dependable than putting two completely incompatible people in mortal danger together. It is an evergreen formula and, with the right cast, one can become memorable or even iconic. It’s even more of a treat when you see it set against the backdrop of something unexpected, like the Cold War. What could be charming about that? Well, lots.
Since premiering globally on September 4, Maydayhas quickly become one of Apple TV’s biggest current movies, topping the platform’s streaming charts around the world. John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) put a Cold War spin on the odd-couple concept with Mayday, pairing Ryan Reynolds(Deadpool) with Kenneth Branagh (A Haunting in Venice).
Set during the Cold War, the movie follows hotshot U.S. Navy pilot Troy “Assassin” Kelly after a top-secret mission over Russian territory goes disastrously wrong. Trapped behind enemy lines, Troy encounters eccentric former KGB agent Nikolai Ustinov, forcing the unlikely pair to work together if the American pilot has any hope of making it home alive.
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The cast is led by Reynolds as Troy Kelly and Branagh as Nikolai Ustinov, alongside Maria Bakalova (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm) as Anna Ustinov, Marcin Dorociński (The Queen’s Gambit) as Alexander Volkov, David Morse (The Green Mile) as Harold Kelly, Louis Cancelmi (Killers of the Flower Moon), Wendy Crewson (Air Force One), and Jesse Buck (The Boys).
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Collider Exclusive · Action Franchise Quiz What Action Series Would You Thrive In? Wick · Fast · Mission · Die Hard
Four franchises. Four completely different ideas of what a hero is: the assassin with a code, the family that never leaves anyone behind, the man who does his own stunts, and the guy who simply refuses to die. Only one of them runs on your particular brand of trouble. Eight questions will tell you which one you would survive.
🐕Wick
🏁Fast
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🧨Mission
🎄Die Hard
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01
How does a room know you’ve walked into it? Every action hero arrives differently. Some of them arrive before they arrive.
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02
It turns physical. What does your fighting actually look like? Choreography is character. Yours says something about you.
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03
Who is standing beside you when it starts? Some franchises are built on a team. Others are built on one person walking in alone.
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04
It has gone badly wrong. What keeps you upright? Act two exists to find out what you’re actually made of.
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05
There’s a vehicle. What are you driving, and how? No action franchise has ever survived without a car chase. This one is yours.
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06
How do you feel about the people giving the orders? There is always an institution. There is rarely a good one.
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07
Underneath all of it, what are you actually doing this for? The stunts are the reason people come. This is the reason they stay.
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08
When the credits roll, what do people say about you? Every franchise is really an argument about what makes someone worth watching.
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Casting Has Been Completed Your Franchise Is…
Four action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you
handle pressure, people, and a room that has just gone very quiet. Here is where you would survive
the trilogy, and probably headline it.
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John Wick · Chapters 1–4 · 2014–2023
John Wick
You are precision with a grudge. You don’t posture, you don’t
escalate, and you don’t warn anybody twice. That is exactly why the people who know you are
so careful never to be the reason you start.
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The Wick films run on discipline: an underworld with actual etiquette, a hero who
honours every rule of it, and a world that unravels the instant someone breaks one
against him.
You share that quality. You are extraordinarily reasonable right up to the line, and
then completely immovable past it.
Focus, commitment and sheer will. You’d be the one carrying grief through three sequels
and turning it into technique rather than noise.
People wouldn’t call you dangerous. They’d say your name quietly and let that do the
work.
The Fast and the Furious · Fast X · 2001–2023
Fast & Furious
You understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about:
the cars are spectacular, but the crew is the point. You collect people, you keep them, and
you’d drive through a building for any one of them.
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This series went from street racing to orbit without ever changing its actual subject,
because loyalty scales and plot doesn’t have to.
You have the same instinct. You build a family out of whoever turns up, and then you
defend it past the point of reason.
You’d thrive here because the franchise rewards exactly your strengths: warmth, nerve,
an absolute refusal to leave anyone behind, and a relaxed relationship with physics.
The mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.
Mission: Impossible · The Final Reckoning · 1996–2025
Mission: Impossible
You over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself
anyway. It looks like control, but it’s really responsibility. You have never worked out how
to ask somebody else to carry the risk.
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This is the franchise of the plan that collapses on schedule: the team, the mask, the
rooftop, and the one person sprinting flat out because sprinting is all that’s left.
You share that refusal to accept an outcome. Told the odds, you treat them as an
administrative error.
You’d thrive here because these films reward competence and loyalty in equal measure.
The mission matters, but nobody on the team gets left on the wrong side of a door.
Some people delegate the cliff. You have never once been that person.
Die Hard · A Good Day to Die Hard · 1988–2013
Die Hard
You are not the most trained person in the building, the best
equipped, or the one anybody would have picked. You are simply the one still standing at the
end, which turns out to be the only qualification that matters.
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Die Hard invented the modern action hero by making him mortal: outgunned, out-planned,
bleeding, and extremely funny about it.
You share that stubbornness. Adversity doesn’t make you noble, it makes you sarcastic,
and then it makes you unstoppable.
You’d thrive here because these films reward improvisation and nerve over preparation,
and you’ve never had the luxury of preparing anyway.
You didn’t want any of this. You just declined to be the person who let it happen.
What Can We Expect From ‘Mayday’?
Bakalova, who’s now starting to become quite the prolific star, previously told MovieWeb how much she enjoyed working on the film. Speaking to her experience on set, she said, “I’ve been lucky with the people that I got a chance to work with, not only because they’re proven to be incredibly talented, gifted, and honestly great professionals, but they’re really kind human beings.” She went on to praise her co-stars, saying, “[Ryan] has been very supportive, open, and very funny. It’s been like a gift to be on set. I played with him and Kenneth Branagh, who is like a British treasure. The fact that I got a chance to collaborate with both of them, it’s been incredible. It’s also an adventure action movie, and it’s only my second one after Dirty Angels.”
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The actress also admitted the film changed how she sees the genre. She explained that she was falling in love with action, despite not knowing much about it before. Bakalova added that, given her heritage and focusing on Danish films in particular, her upbringing had focused on heavy, dramatic fare, which was why these big films were such a joy to her.
Mayday is streaming exclusively on Apple TV.
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Release Date
September 4, 2026
Runtime
110 minutes
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Producers
Ashley Fox, Dana Goldberg, David Ellison, Don Granger, John G. Scotti, Johnny Pariseau, Jonathan Goldstein, Patrick Gooing
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