Producers: David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Ashley Fox, Johnny Pariseau, Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley   Directors: John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein    Screenplay: John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein   Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Kenneth Branagh, Marcin Dorocinski, Maria Bakalova, David Morse, Clark Johnson, Wendy Crewson, Louis Cancelmi, Josh Hamilton, Lovell Adams-Gray, Alex Mallari Jr., Alden Adair, A;ex Ozerov-Meyer and Jacob Hanlon   Distributor: Apple TV

Grade: C

Action comedies with mismatched buddies invariably strain credulity, but “Mayday” goes above and beyond in that department.  Set in the waning days of the Cold War, 1987 to be precise, this fable about a U.S. airman downed over the USSR and an ex-KGB agent who helps him escape back to the West piles absurdity on absurdity before expiring with one more lame joke about the enduring friendship that grows over the course of their implausible adventure.  And even that’s not enough: a flashback inserted in the closing credits repeats one of the movie’s worst moments, in which the American explains, in a way meant to be both funny and maudlin, how he got his nickname of “Assassin.”

The flyboy is Troy Kelly (Ryan Reynolds), whom we meet as he’s trading smart-alecky remarks with his Air Force wingman Boomer (Lovell Adams-Gray) during a training exercise; they’re actually going back and forth about the Cabbage Patch Kids, the first of many such appeals to pop nostalgia intended to remind audiences without a broad historical understanding of the period in which the story is set.  When his friend’s plane experiences trouble, Troy uses a dangerous, unauthorized maneuver to get him back safely to their carrier. 

That sense of daring leads his commander to promote the gung-ho guy to a spy mission over the USSR, which he truly believes to be unmitigatedly evil.  Unfortunately, on his first flight as co-pilot, the plane, an experimental craft nicknamed Blackbird (the movie’s original title) is shot down, pilot Pete Sanders (Louis Cancelmi) dies, and Troy’s thrown from the wreckage badly injured.  Collapsing as a formidable figure carrying a rifle strides toward him, he expects to awaken in a Soviet prison. 

Instead, he finds himself in the remote cabin of Nikolai Ustinov (Kenneth Branagh), a burly, bearded fellow who speaks softly and has the personality not of the fearsome Russian Bear but one of the teddy variety.  The place is decorated with American bric-a-brac and Nikolai, insisting that Troy call him Nicki, explains that he’s a former Soviet agent who became disillusioned with his KGB duties and wants nothing more than to emigrate to the U.S., which he reveres for its ideals of liberty and justice.  He even owns a bootleg VHS of “Top Gun,” and sees Kelly as a real-life Pete Mitchell.

Troy is buying none of it. He steals Nicolai’s truck and drives to a rural bar where the patrons quickly realize who he is and try to capture him.  He’s saved only by Nikolai’s intervention: in a bruising battle, the guy—Branagh, or more plausibly his able double–dispatches all of them.  Ustinov then hides him when maniacally old-school KGB bigwig Alexander Volkov (Marcin Dorocinski) comes searching for the downed airman, and leads him on a trek to possible escape after Volkov departs, knowing the man will soon return with a full complement of his fellow agents—which of course he does.

That leads to an eventful chase through the country, which winds up at an airfield where they steal a plane in hopes of reaching an American carrier, and safety for them both.  It’s an episodic journey, which includes stops on a train filled with suspicious Soviet troops, the home of a government official who’s hosting his mistress, the house of a peasant couple that offers them a night’s respite, the current hiding-place of Nikolai’s estranged daughter Anna (Maria Bakalova), a dissident whom her father hopes to persuade to join them, and a KGB interrogation cell.  These sequences grow increasingly preposterous as they mount up, culminating in the boys’ theft of a gigantic tank, topped with a nuclear missile, from a Moscow military parade that they race along the highway to the Sheremetyevo airfield.

Along the way, of course, the two bond, and Kelly learns not only that all Russians aren’t evil, but that his own country is flawed, particularly when he finds it difficult to persuade officialdom to honor his pledge to Nikolai to get him asylum.  (He’s also shocked when Volkov gives him proof that the U.S. had long suppressed information about the medical dangers of asbestos, the probable cause of the cancer from which his father, played by David Morse, is now suffering.)  Naturally he’ll go to extremes to ensure that his promise is kept, in addition to appearing as a whistleblower before Congress on the matter of asbestos.

Of course, for a fantasy like this to work, the lead actors have to be exceptionally likable, so much will depend on your attitude toward Reynolds, who’s doing the same wiseguy shtick he’s been coasting on for years, whether masked as Deadpool or not. For some of us, his snark is getting as old as those Cabbage Patch Kids Troy talks about, but if you’re more appreciative of it, his presence will not be as debilitating as it might otherwise be.

The saving grace, however, is Branagh, whose understatement is like a soothing balm.  Although he makes an unlikely action hero, his general attitude of bemusement is winning; it’s as though he were winking at us with a twinkle in his eye, saying “Look, I know this is crap, you know it’s crap, so let’s just relax and enjoy it, especially since I’m being well paid.”  By contrast, Dorocinski is an embarrassment as the mad dog KGB guy who hates Gorbachev (remember him?) 

Nobody else in the cast makes more than a fleeting impression except for a young fellow named Jacob Hanlon, who has a single scene as a vampiric-looking boy who stares unblinkingly across the table from Troy during that sojourn in the peasants’ cabin.  It’s a deliciously creepy moment.

Technically “Mayday” is okay, with Nora Takacs Ekberg’s production design and Debra McGuire’s costumes adequate.  The visual effects overseen by James E. Price and Randall Starr are at best commonplace, while Barry Peterson’s cinematography emphasizes a sitcom-like brightness that accentuates the cheesiness of the Quebec-shot locales.  The editing by Jamie Gross and John Lee lets some sequences drag on awfully long, leading to a running-time that could use some trimming, and Colin Stetson’s score works overtime in the action sequences.

“Mayday” has been packaged by Apple and its journeymen writer-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein as an empty-headed crowd-pleaser, but particularly if one considers Russia’s continuing brutality in Ukraine and the tepid U.S. response to it, its message about there being good and bad in everybody might come across as simple-minded.  But given its narrative ridiculousness, even if one’s able to set such unpleasant considerations aside, it could be you who will be shouting for help before the movie is over.

Producers: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo, Angela Russo-Otstot, Michael Disco and Kassee Whiting    Director: James Ashcroft   Screenplay: Ben Jacoby and Chase Palmer   Cast: Robert De Niro, Michelle Monaghan, Adam Scott, Hamish Linklater, Owen Teague, Acston Luca Porto, Will Brill, Exavier Montanez, Robert Clohessy, Aniela Zeig and Alyse Alan Louis  and John Grigley   Distributor: Netflix

Grade: C

Daddy issues abound in “The Whisper Man,” a convoluted but ultimately simple-minded crime thriller adapted by Ben Jacoby and Chase Palmer from a 2019 novel by Alex North.  Given the talent on both sides of camera—it’s directed by James Ashcroft (“Coming Home in the Dark,” “The Rule of Jenny Pen”) and boasts an exceptional cast—the movie proves a distinct disappointment.

It’s a serial killer tale about a murderer of young boys who toys with their families by sending tapes of conversations with the kids he’s abducted before covering their faces with a cloth and strangling them.  The film begins in the present day with Detective Amanda Beck (Michelle Monaghan) leading a search team looking for missing Neil Spencer (Exavier Montanez) but finding instead the body of another child.  The pattern recalls that of a mass murderer from the 1990s, Frank Carter (Michael Keaton), who was captured by long-retired Detective Pete Willlis (Robert De Niro) and has been in prison ever since.  Frank was known as The Whisper Man because of how he quietly invited his victims to follow him, and it seems obvious that someone is now copying his crimes.  Amanda approaches Pete hoping for advice, but he brushes her off.

At the same time Tom Kennedy (Adam Scott), a recently widowed mystery novelist struggling with alcohol, has moved to town with his son Jake (Acston Luca Porto), whose grief over the loss of his mother has made him a solitary kid, obsessing over the packet of mementos of her he carries around with him and pores over; Tom is concerned that the boy’s only friend is imaginary, a girl (Aniela Zeig) in a blue sweater.  But what really concerns him is that he overhears Jake talking about—perhaps to—the Whisper Man.  Even more disturbing, he encounters a man in the basement of the house, who manages to escape.  And the police refuse to take the break-in seriously.

The stress leads Tom to drink, and he blows up at Jake.  Jake soon disappears, and Tom turns to someone he’s had nothing to do with for decades, his estranged father, who happens to be Pete—a happy coincidence indeed.  Willis joins Amanda’s investigation, and after Neil Spencer’s body is discovered, agrees to do something he’s heretofore resisted, trying to pump Carter for information.

As is usual in such fare, the script adds a number of suspicious parties to the mix in an effort to generate uncertainty.  There’s Frank’s wife Jane (Alyse Alan Louis), who’s seen only in decades-old footage since she’s hidden away in witness protection.  And George Carringdon (Owen Teague), a teacher who was a student of the therapist who counseled her traumatized son.  And Dominic Barrett (John Grigley), the previous tenant in Tom’s house who, it’s speculated, might have been Frank’s accomplice years earlier but is not to be found.  And Victor Tyler (Robert Clohessy), a convict who could have served as a contact for Frank with people on the outside, like Norman Collins (Hamish Linklater), a well-to-do fellow with an obsession for collecting memorabilia connected with infamous murderers.  (Curiously, no suspicion seems to attach to the dead boys’ relatives.) 

Of course, these people need not be who they seem.  And in the end the solution to the central mystery is much more obvious than the plotting suggests (and psychologically rather farfetched), though to be sure there’s lots of nefarious stuff going on at the margins.  As for the villain, he eventually gets his just deserts in a fashion that might be described as implausible twice over.

While the detecting takes up most of the screen time, moreover, overcoming the rift between Pete and Tom is a necessary subplot.  Gradually they set aside their animosity; an important part of that involves Mr. Night, the imaginary friend Tom admits to Jake that he once had—in their search for the lost boy.  By the end both are willing to make great sacrifices to save him.  The film even offers a supernatural coda.

There are effectively creepy moments in “The Whisper Man.”  Ashcroft, after all, knows his way around such material, and even at its weakest the script gives him opportunities to elicit some chills.  He also has a strong cast, but most are rather disappointing.  De Niro goes through much of the picture on a sort of autopilot, though he rouses himself in his back-and-forth with Keaton; in their conversations the two canny actors bring out the best in each other.  Scott, on the other hand, pitches his performance at so high an emotional level that he seems to be trying to make up for his ultra-subdued turn in “Severance.” Monaghan is fine, as are Teague and Linklater, while Porto makes a sympathetic tyke.

Ashcroft draws solid contributions from his crew. Production designer Anastasia White makes good use of the New Jersey locations, and cinematographer Peter Deming creates a suitable dark, somber mood.  And while Christopher Tellefsen’s editing can be lethargic at times, and his cutting of action sequences is sometimes messy, Colin Stetson’s score sets a properly eerie atmosphere.

Perhaps “The Whisper Man” worked better on the printed page, but onscreen it comes across as unduly contrived and hard to swallow.