Deadpool

Deadpool's girlish finger on his chin pose
is typical of the 4th wall popping humor
 in the film.

Plot: Hitman tough guy Wade (Ryan Reynolds) falls in love with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), and then gets a terminal disease. Doctor Ajax (Ed Skrein) heals him, and gives him X-Man style mutant powers as a side effect. Turns out becoming a mutant is painful and disfiguring, and that Ajax is a sadistic jerk. Wade renames himself Deadpool, and the rest of the movie is about how he tries to get revenge on Ajax for making him ugly.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Deadpool is a self-parody with continuous dialog between Wade and the audience: a lot of "fourth wall popping" jokes and snarkiness. If you like snark and self-parody, then this movie will work for you. It is pretty funny. A big dose of action, a little love story, and some jokes. What is the matter with that? If you don't like Wade's wise-cracking asshole personality, you won't like the movie.

This is not your usual Marvel movie because the self-aware monolog, and because the R-rated nudity and bawdy jokes. There were an endless number of punches to the balls.

Ryan Reynolds is a good actor, both in the comic parts and in the tragic parts. Likeable and engaging. He makes the movie. Villain Ed Skrein is great too.

The writing is the real star. The snarky jokes, clever dialog, and the visual humor break up the violence. 

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Ed Skrein, Morena Baccarin 

Directed by: Tim Miller

Written by: Rhett Resse, Paul Wernick

The Music: Fast-paced electronic music by DJ XL, whose done many action movie songs. It is spaced out by pop songs, most notably Careless Whisper by Wham! Gotta love the saxophone. 

The Visuals: Solid special effects like you expect from Marvel; nothing special. The fights are shot in-close and tight, as seems to be the style in the 2010's.  

Rating: 2.5 stars: Fun to watch. Deadpool is pure entertainment: no positive moral message here. Actually it has a negative message about how your facial appearance is more important than getting cured of cancer and revenge with high collateral damage. See MAJOR SPOILER below. 

 

More: There is a little scene at the end of the credits. A little funny. Maybe not worth waiting for.

MAJOR SPOILER: Deadpool chases down Ajax because he made Deadpool ugly, but of course, his girl friend loved him anyway. In 21st century America, people are valued for the character not their appearance, so there was not reason for Deadpool to want revenge on Ajax and then kill him. Ajax did save his life after all. (Well OK, he was sadist too, but still.) Deadpool kills many other people as a means of finding Ajax on his quest. Hard to justify this.

I want to try to tie the amoral hero's disillusioned, anti-society motivation to the political environment and the economic unease arising from the Great Recession. Maybe this is overblown. I think that angry, outsider politicians finds their twin in the angry, anti-intellectual hero Deadpool.



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