Deadpool *** (2016, Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Gina Carano, T J Miller, Ed Skrein) – Movie Review

Based on Marvel Comics’ most unconventional anti-superhero, this exceptionally grown-up and tough toned Marvel movie tells the origin story of former Special Forces operative turned mercenary Wade Wilson, played by a totally up-for-it Ryan Reynolds.

He is finally given his own movie after appearing in Hugh Jackman’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine back in 2009, where he was so effective but had little to do. Cue several Wolverine and Jackman jokes, by the way, all of them welcome. How thrilled Jackman’s agent must be about the free publicity!

Wade meets the love of his life Vanessa (breathtaking Brazilian beauty Morena Baccarin – surely a future Bond girl!), and total blissful sex, love and happiness are theirs. But then, promptly, Wade gets terminal cancer, and is approached by a man calling himself Ajax, who says he can cure him.

Alas, Ajax turns out to be a sadistic torturer and subjects our anti-hero to a rogue experiment that leaves him with the mixed blessing of a Freddy Krueger style pizza face and accelerated healing powers. Oh! … and Ah!

There’s nothing to do but embrace your inner anti-superhero, put on a cute suit and adopt some random name written on a blackboard, the alter ego Captain Dead Pool, not, maybe just Deadpool.

Armed with his new abilities and the red cute suit, plus his natural shockingly dark and twisted sense of humour, Deadpool hunts down that villain who tried to destroy his life, Ajax, aka Francis.

He is played with some relish by grinning British villain Ed Skrein, last seen in The Transporter Refueled (2015) and clearly trying to take over from Jason Statham as the British villain de nos jours. Well, he may be on his way but he has a ways to go yet. Acting wise, he needs a shot in the arm, but he looks good in the action, though.

Ryan Reynolds is a brilliantly funny, talented, appealing man, absolutely ideal as Deadpool, a character he makes totally his own. No one could do it better. If you share Deadpool’s uber-cynical, dark and twisted sense of humour and gleeful taste for twisted, sadistic revenge, this will be a total treat. Others may want to approach with caution. It’s an extremely slick, deliberately heartless enterprise, taking no prisoners. 

Reynolds talking to camera works a treat, breaking the fourth wall in style. Even if some of the jokes are obscure, are not funny, or too similar, there are plenty that are actually funny. Some of the action is pretty grim, some exciting and clever feeling. It is a mixed bag of goodies, with most of the best of them in the first half of the movie.

Reynolds’s Deadpool chats to us in the movie’s post-credit scene about making a Deadpool 2 sequel. We shall have to wait and see…

Now it’s looking likely. Costing a tight $58 million, Deadpool earned $150 million at the US box office over the four-day President’s Weekend, the highest ever opening for an R-rated movie, and earned $260 million in its first week.

On 7 April 2016, it was announced that Reynolds, who led Deadpool to a global box office of $786 million as the highest grossing R-rated movie ever and seventh-highest-grossing movie of 2016, will reprise the Marvel character for the greenlit sequel, Deadpool 2.

On 22 October 2016 , it was announced that director Tim Miller will not be returning to direct Deadpool 2 because of a series of creative differences with Reynolds.

In the film, Wade ends up taking the name Deadpool from the bar’s betting pool. In the comics, when Wade is being experimented on as part of the programme that leads to his powers, the guards and inmates have a dead pool where they gamble on who will die next, and he takes his name from this.

It seems the comics chose the name and concept as a homage to the fifth Dirty Harry movie, The Dead Pool (1988).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/

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