Leave it to Reynolds and Branagh to heat up the Cold War.

Ever since the 1980s, we’ve been getting a number of buddy action comedies from “48 Hours” to “Lethal Weapon” to “Rush Hour” to the mediocre “I Spy” to the hilarious “21 Jump Street” to the cynical “Red Notice” to the awful “Red One.” And I guess with the new AppleTV action comedy “Mayday,” it wants to be an 80s buddy comedy set in 1987, 40 years into the Cold War. So the math speaks for itself.

I’ve been skeptical about this movie, considering how “Fountain of Youth” and “Ghosted” were wasted efforts, but I realized that “The Dink” was a funny comedy that was worthy of being in AppleTV’s library. “Mayday” is a funny entry that knows how to handle the 80s buddy formula. It’s not mean-spirited and it’s not cynical. It just has formulas that filmmakers John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein can overshadow by casting Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh in the leads.

Reynolds stars as Troy “Assassin” Kelly,” a real Top Gun in the US Navy, who is assigned to fly a Lockhead SR-71 Blackbird over the Soviet Union. He’s forced the inject himself when his plane gets attacked, and he wakes up in the house of an ex-KGB carpenter named Nikolai Ustinov (Branagh), who tends to his wounds and dreams of going to America. Yes, he watches a bootleg cop of “Top Gun” with one scene apparently taking place in the men’s room. And yes, he even wants to go to McDonalds. He feels more American than Russian.

At first, for obvious reasons, Troy doesn’t trust Nick, but he’s his only hope of getting out of Russia. Or he can wait until the Cold War is over. No pressure. The Russian man knows the escape roots (how to ditch the car in the lake, how to escape from a train full of Soviet soldiers, etc.), while the American man knows what’s at stake here. Some of it is dangerous, some of it is silly, and some of it is wisecracking. After-all, it wouldn’t be a Reynolds action comedy without them. And why is his nickname “Assassin?” That’s for him and friends to know, and for Nick to find out later in the film.

There’s also a small subplot that isn’t really developed, and it’s involves Nick’s estranged daughter (Maria Bakalova), who temporarily helps him and Troy dodge the bad guys. But then, they have to go their separate ways. I think there could have been more to that character, but the movie still allows the main characters to have the right kind of chemistry. It doesn’t require arguments and punches to be funny; it requires a time and place for them to elevate on that. And I just reviewed “By Any Means,” which had a black FBI agent and a white mob informant in the 60s, but that’s a whole other story.

So that’s two comedies this year on the streaming site that I think are funny and honest: “The Dink” and “Mayday.” And it makes me wonder why most streaming comedies can’t be like them? I can tell when a streaming movie is spoiled (and I tried to tell you not to see “Balls Up” or “The Runner” on Amazon Prime Video), and this one isn’t spoiled. It likes “Top Gun” fans, heroes on opposite sides of the coin, and the action and adventure they engage in. I think if Daley and Goldstein can make us laugh with “Game Night” and “Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” they can lampoon the Cold War with the right star power.

Either Troy can follow the formulas or he can wait until the Cold War is over. But what fun would that be?

Now Streaming on AppleTV