A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Sir Kenneth Branagh has played the cowardly wizard Gilderoy Lockhart in "Harry Potter," the mustache-wearing detective Hercule Poirot and, of course, the prince of Denmark.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "HAMLET")
KENNETH BRANAGH: (As Hamlet) To be or not to be that is the question.
MARTÍNEZ: Now Branagh is trading "Hamlet" for hand-to-hand combat.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MAYDAY")
RYAN REYNOLDS: (As Troy Kelly) Where'd you learn to fight like that?
BRANAGH: (As Nikolai Ustinov) None of us escape what we are.
MARTÍNEZ: Branagh and I spoke about his new film, "Mayday," on Apple TV. It's set in the Cold War. A U.S. Navy fighter pilot, played by Ryan Reynolds, is shot down behind enemy lines in the Soviet Union. He's rescued by Branagh's character, an ex-KGB-agent with a fondness for the United States. Now, the pilot, Troy, wakes up to find that he's in a cabin decorated with images of Mount Rushmore, the moon landing and an I love New York sticker.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MAYDAY")
REYNOLDS: (As Troy Kelly) What is with all the American stuff?
BRANAGH: (As Nikolai Ustinov) Well, this may shock you. But I admire your country very much, your democracy and your culture and your food. I have never had McDonald's, but I suspect I would love it. You could almost say I am obsessed.
REYNOLDS: (As Troy Kelly) Is that right?
BRANAGH: (As Nikolai Ustinov) My dream is to someday live in America, drive from sea to shining sea in a recreational vehicle.
REYNOLDS: (As Troy Kelly) Fun.
MARTÍNEZ: So, Kenneth, that is actually my retirement dream, is to...
BRANAGH: (Laughter).
MARTÍNEZ: ...Drive from sea to shining sea in a recreational vehicle. But what makes America so attractive to a Nikolai, or Nick, as you want us to know him as?
BRANAGH: Well, our story is set in 1987, and so in the pre-digital age. Someone like Nick who has, for reasons we will discover, retired, it would seem, to a far-off region of Russia, where he seems to be living a life of isolation. And so the dream of America is brought to him by whatever means - a very many times played cassette of the movie "Top Gun," and everything that it might evoke about "freedom," in quotes, as seen by an isolated Russian in the late '80s.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. And Troy is his dream incarnate, right? You mentioned "Top Gun." I mean, Troy is a fighter pilot. So it's like this is the best thing that's ever happened to Nikolai.
BRANAGH: It is. And yet, as an audience, we find ourselves wondering what lies beneath, because the surprises include knowing who Nikolai really is, which is not the charming rustic of the rural isolation, but a man with a KGB past, who will very soon be on the run, hunted by his former employers and with only Troy Kelly, his American fighter pilot new pal as a colleague to mutually help each other to get to Moscow and to get out of Russia.
MARTÍNEZ: So you say a man with a KGB past, which we discover along with Troy because as the action starts to unfold, you start to do some amazing things, kind of like a Russian John Wick.
BRANAGH: (Laughter) He certainly reveals that this kind of individual is still silent, but deadly when he chooses to use what is clearly a lot of latent potential for violence, actual skills and an economy, a sort of terrifying economy of physical brutality when he needs quickly to bring to a conclusion a dangerous situation and its possibilities. So we see him in a bar fight where he improvises with pool cues, with the pool triangle, with glasses and anything at his disposal, enough to make Troy Kelly ask with some wonder, where did you learn to fight like that? And so his dark past emerges, something he appears to be trying to get away from as he chases the American dream but is going to be at his service as we race them back across this vast land to try and find a way out of danger.
MARTÍNEZ: I wrote down what you said, terrifying economy of brutality. That is one heck of a way to describe a character.
BRANAGH: (Laughter) Well, he just only moves when he needs to.
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter).
BRANAGH: When he needs to, it is only when he is under threat. And when he's under threat, the way to neutralize it is with speed, economy and a sort of deadly efficiency. From my own point of view, it was, as a performer, something that required me to show up early in order to stay flexible, so that a man of a certain age could fling himself around sufficiently convincingly, with directors who wanted to shoot things all in one shot and said, well, it should be you doing it. It was something I had to study with some detail.
MARTÍNEZ: You know, thinking back, Kenneth, when I was a teenager in the '80s, the Soviet Union felt like it was something that every American needed to be terrified by. There's a scene, Nick and Troy, they talk about why they each wanted to enlist. Let's play that.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MAYDAY")
REYNOLDS: (As Troy Kelly) I wanted to serve my country. I think you can understand that.
BRANAGH: (As Nikolai Ustinov) Fear drove me to serve mine. We were told that America would destroy us, that your greed and soullessness would bring the end of humanity.
REYNOLDS: (As Troy Kelly) We were taught that you were cogs in a giant world-killing machine.
BRANAGH: (As Nikolai Ustinov) We were both fed lies.
REYNOLDS: (As Troy Kelly) I wasn't fed lies. It was Khrushchev that said, we will bury you.
BRANAGH: (As Nikolai Ustinov) And Reagan called us the evil empire. Do you believe we are all evil?
REYNOLDS: (As Troy Kelly) I believe you're brainwashed, products of the system that you grew up in.
BRANAGH: (As Nikolai Ustinov) But you are not a product of your system, Troy?
MARTÍNEZ: So, Kenneth, I mean, Hollywood was more than willing to step in with storylines that fed that fear. But all those movies, I remember them as so much fun. Then I'd watch the news and be terrified. But I'd watch the movies and had a laugh.
BRANAGH: Yeah. I think that there was a celebration in various ways of the division. I mean, isn't it interesting? The clip you just played, you think, and this is an action comedy, right?
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter).
BRANAGH: But there's a conversation that is - that skirts around quite sort of fundamental things about whether we believe we're in the grip of the truth. You could say that in the world we live in that that's a constant questioning that we have. And so I think that it has this very light, leaning touch into things that concern us now. And the throwback element to the '80s was to a time in the production of these films where I think that kind of discussion was very happily embraced, knowing that it could be done through the medium of entertainment, through the joy and through the celebration of difference and division - and seeing humor as a critical way in which you could understand how somebody who was different from you also shared all these other touchpoints of humanity. And the easiest way to do that is always, I think, by making people laugh and having them be diverted, and then let them think what they think when they think it.
MARTÍNEZ: Kenneth Branagh stars in "Mayday," out today on Apple TV. Kenneth, thank you very much.
BRANAGH: Thank you so much.
MARTÍNEZ: And a note, Apple is a financial supporter of NPR.
(SOUNDBITE OF KENNY LOGGINS SONG, "DANGER ZONE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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