Deadpool 2
Ryan Reynolds' sarcastic superhero return is an improvement on the original, but it's still nowhere near as subversive as it thinks it is
It’s easy to see why Ryan Reynolds' pisstaking Deadpool appeals to superhero movie fans and agnostics alike. Despite treating the genre with the level of reverence the British public reserve for Jeremy Hunt, the 'Merc with a Mouth' is clearly a bit in love with comic book films too; you have to love something to satirise it so well. Officially Deadpool’s mutant genes mean he can heal any wound, but his real superpower is his encyclopedic knowledge of geek culture and his ability to turn his fandom into the perfect withering joke at The Avengers, Justice League or the X-Men’s expense in any situation. If the Deadpool films went in for subtitles, we’d suggest Deadpool 2: Infinity Gags.
The irreverent first film was a tonic to the square Marvel and DC movies that dominate our cinema screens, but it had many of these films' flaws too – namely muddy visuals, forgettable action scenes and no clue what to do with its female characters. To its credit, Deadpool 2 is a marked improvement on two of these fronts. John Wick co-director David Leitch (or as he’s referred to in the credits, “one of the guys who killed John Wick’s dog”) deserves credit in this regard. You’d expect the action to be more fluid in Leitch’s hands, but it's also wittier too.
The best visual gags come in an inspired middle section in which Deadpool is putting his own mutant squad together after being rejected by the comically spartan X-Men team of Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead. For about 15 minutes Deadpool 2 truly soars, as several ridiculous Z-listers from the X-Men universe – played by Bill Skarsgård, Terry Crews and, er, a proper massive A-lister as the invisible Vanisher – audition to be part of Deadpool’s crew, along with, randomly, an average guy called Peter (Rob Delaney) who saw the ad on GumTree. The subsequent mission involves an ill-advised parachute jump onto a moving truck in high winds, and it goes wonderfully and violently awry. Unlike Infinity War, Deadpool 2 isn’t shy about thinning out its hefty cast list.
The reason this lone-wolf mercenary requires a team is twofold: one, he’s grieving the death of his fiancée (Morena Baccarin), who’s killed in the opening scene by a stray bullet meant for Deadpool, and could do with the company; and two, he needs backup to rescue Russell, the 14-year-old Kiwi mutant played by Julian Dennison whom Deadpool has reluctantly taken under his wing, from Cable. Josh Brolin's villain is a badass from the future who’s planning to kill the boy before he begins a murder spree.
Brolin is proving himself a dab hand at playing misanthropic villains. His Thanos was the highlight of the recent Avengers sequel, and he’s pleasingly stoic here too, which allows him to play straight man to Reynolds' manic goofball. The comic dynamite, though, is Dennison. A foul-mouthed orphan with serious anger issues, he may be a carbon copy of the Tupac-loving wannabe thug he played in Hunt for the Wilderpeople, but any lack of originality is made up for by Dennison’s ability to sell a gag. He manages to mine half-a-dozen laughs out of the ways he wields a ball point pen alone.
Deadpool 2 is certainly funny, but never as much as it thinks it is (apart from maybe during its truly excellent closing credits sequence). It may laugh at all the superhero cliches, but its own story has plenty of them: the disposable love interest, the cute sidekick, the self-pitying hero who needs to find love, the corny self-sacrificing ending. And despite introducing a kickass female character with a wonderfully original superpower (Atlanta’s Zazie Beetz as Domino, who has the gift of being extremely lucky), the film gives her nothing to do beside punch a few bad guys. Deadpool clearly thinks he’s an anarchist, but if he really wanted to upturn the apple cart, he needs to throw out the superhero rulebook completely.
Released by 20th Century Fox