Review: Deadpool

Deadpool (15)

USA 2016 118 mins Dir: Tim Miller Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein, T.J. Miller, Gina Carano

A film capable of operating both as a devious piece of in-jokery and an engaging piece of drama in its own right is a rare thing. 2010’s sly entertaining Kick-Ass got it exactly right: a gleefully bloody and profane deconstruction of the superhero genre that also delivered bubblegum comic book action in droves. It’s a balance that Fox-owned, Marvel property Deadpool struggles with, although it’s not for want of trying, largely thanks to the exuberant lead performance of Ryan Reynolds who returns to right the wrongs of the title character’s appearance in 2009’s execrable X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Still, any comic book movie that’s at least willing to break the rules in our somewhat jaded, superhero-saturated climate is to be admired. Deadpool kicks off with an absolute doozy of a credits sequence, substituting the usual placeholders with the likes of ‘A British Villain’ and ‘An Overpaid Tool’ instead of ‘director’. We’re then rapidly introduced to the eponymous Merc with the Mouth (Reynolds), a red-suited anti-hero with a lethal array of quips and fighting skills who proceeds to decimate a whole squadron of goons on a freeway.

Why? For that we must flash back and get the obligatory origin story, a facile development cheekily acknowledged by Deadpool himself who routinely breaks the fourth wall to acknowledge the audience’s complicity in, and knowledge of, superhero conventions. We discover that Deadpool began life as motormouthed mercenary Wade Wilson whose future with escort-turned-lover Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) is threatened when he is diagnosed with terminal cancer.

However, salvation may be at hand when he decides to participate in a mysterious military experiment promising an experimental cure for the disease; needless to say the treatment, overseen by Wade’s eventual nemesis Ajax (Ed Skrein) goes horribly wrong and he ends up a scarred shadow of his former self, a damaged man determined to track down Ajax. In the process however, Wade has developed extraordinary regenerative powers – from there, it’s just a hop, skip and a costume-making montage to becoming Deadpool himself.

Flippant and irreverent to a fault, Deadpool the movie often has trouble establishing a consistent tone. The movie is happy playing up to those viewers seemingly bored with the stranglehold both Marvel and DC have over the blockbuster market, overtly acknowledging today’s genre domination (“McAvoy or Stewart?” Deadpool enquires about Charles Xavier. “It’s so hard to keep up with these franchises.”) However at the same time it inevitably proceeds down the very track it sets out to lampoon, lining up the traumatic creation story, the wisecracking sidekick and the climactic battle to save the imperilled love interest (even more disappointing for the way that Baccarin’s initially sassy Vanessa is reduced to window dressing). The movie wants to have its superhero cake and eat it too but it’s ultimately less subversive than it thinks, whilst a good degree of the self-referentiality is distracting, awkwardly jumping between the fiction/non-fiction boundaries (a gag involving a Hugh Jackman face mask is a classic example – why or how would Deadpool be aware of a real actor playing a fictional character?)

Even so, Reynolds’ unyielding energy helps paper over a lot of the cracks. An underrated performer who has shown dramatic promise in the likes of Buried, he’s an actor just as capable of showing the (fleeting) vulnerabilities beneath Deadpool’s costume as he is spitting out the character’s brilliantly nasty profanities. Nevertheless, it’s the supporting players who steal the show with Miller’s sidekick Weasel trading hilariously off-colour insults (“You look like an avocado had sex with an older avocado”) and Leslie Uggams wonderfully sparky as Blind Al, Deadpool’s elderly, blind roommate. (A fan favourite character in the original Marvel comics, it will be curious to see how Al develops in the inevitable sequels.)

Enjoyable contributions also come from Stefan Kapicic as the metal-bodied Colossus and Brianna Hildebrand as the perennially disinterested Negasonic Teenage Warhead, both graduates of the X-Men school who, Deadpool pithily observes, appear as a twosome without their more famous mutant cohorts seemingly due to budget constraints. And whilst it’s hard to get emotionally invested in a movie so insistently jokey and so intent on tearing into the aforementioned fourth wall, the scrappy sense of humour and the jagged edges are at least a refreshing palliative compared to the tedious angst that has allowed to dominate so many recent comic book epics. After all, any movie that takes a deliciously snarky pot-shot at Deadpool’s previous aborted attempt at stardom (we’re looking at you, Origins) can’t be all bad.