Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Yes, you read the age rating correctly. Deadpool may be a superhero movie and it may have the Marvel stamp on it, but this is strictly, definitely, completely not for children.
Which is a shame for the young ’uns since they’ll be missing out on the best Marvel film since Guardians of the Galaxy and a true breath of fresh air in an overstuffed genre that’s only getting more bloated.
But for those of us old enough, we can sit back and enjoy this rip-roaringly hilarious, viscerally violent, gleefully profane, fourth-wall shattering affair with delight.
Wade Wilson (Reynolds) is ‘the merc with the mouth’, a former special forces operative who works as a mercenary in New York City. After being diagnosed with terminal cancer, a recruiter from the Weapon X programme (the same one that ‘produced’ Wolverine – this film shares a universe with the X-Men series) approaches Wade and offers him an experimental cure for his cancer.
Eventually accepting, he is injected with a serum designed to awaken latent mutant genes and then subjected to weeks of torture to trigger the mutation by Ajax (Skrein). This ultimately allows Wade to develop a rapid healing ability which cures his cancer, but leaves his face and body horribly scarred and disfigured.
He then sets out to hunt down Ajax and extract revenge, while attempting to reconnect with his ex-fiancée Vanessa (Baccarin).
In case you hadn’t heard about Deadpool’s troubled cinematic history, it had been in development hell for more than 10 years, passed from studio to studio like a children’s birthday party game.
Following that was X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Now, you incinerate, eviscerate and even decapitate Deadpool, and he’ll keep on coming back at you. However, this was one atrocity he barely survived, with his famous mouth literally sewn shut and all the facets that made the character unique completely stripped away in favour of a horrendous caricature in an equally bad movie.
Luckily, actor Ryan Reynolds waged a one-man war against 20th Century Fox to give the atypical hero the outing he deserved, complete with the humour and meta elements the comics were famous for.
Reynolds is incredible in the role; he simply is Deadpool. He’s charismatic, exuberant and larger-than-life, which isn’t easy considering how much of the film he spends either in a full-body costume or beneath heavy prosthetics.
It helps that the suit is so well-designed and authentic that it looks like it walked straight out of one of Marvel’s pages, but it’s really brought to life by Reynolds’ physical performance and some subtle CGI on the mask to really give this the character the level of expression he requires.
It’s not just the physical aspect which strikes gold. Deadpool doesn’t shut up for the entire movie, and from the first minute you’re relentlessly bombarded with one-liners, put-downs and cripplingly-hilarious asides. He really does have no off-switch, even when he’s plotting vengeance and chasing the villain who made his face resemble my mum’s corn beef hash.
Most of the jokes are either too brilliant or too rude to ruin here, but there’s an incredible scene reminiscent of the Black Knight from Monty Python’s Holy Grail that had me howling and a meta jab at the studio’s budget when he visits the X-Mansion that is so clever in its simplicity.
It’s not perfect, though. For all the risks it takes with its central character, Deadpool plays it safe when it comes to its choice of plot and villains. It’s a relatively straightforward origin story which evolves into an equally straightforward tale of revenge. We’ve seen practically the exact same thing before with Wolverine in X-2 and Origins.
Ajax fails to become a truly threatening or memorable villain since he’s given so little to do. He’s not helped by a general haziness surrounding his project to create super slaves either. At most, we get a sense that these people being experimented on are being auctioned off to the wealthy and warmongering, but there’s no hint at a deeper story being put into motion, and as a result the stakes don’t feel particularly high and Ajax feels like he exists solely to be hunted.
Luckily, the choreography is stylish throughout, with Deadpool switching elegantly between pistols and katanas. He counts down his number of bullets while severing heads and karate-kicking them across the screen, usually with accompanying commentary speaking directly to the audience.
These are refined sequences full of creative violence and wit, proving that you haven’t quite seen everything when it comes to superhero action scenes.
Despite a villain lacking in conviction, this is a fantastic film absolutely plastered in vulgarity, gore and winks to the audience. After the relatively timid offerings of the other Marvel movies, it’s a delight to see someone take the reins, take off the shackles and unleash serious superhero fun. Verdict: Dead good.
