Film Review: Deadpool

Marvel‘s first release of 2016, and the eighth installment in the X-Men series, directed by Tim Miller, Deadpool tells the origin story of former Special Forces operative turned mercenary Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), who, diagnosed with terminal cancer and willing to do anything to spend more time with his fiance, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), undergoes a rogue experiment that leaves him with accelerated healing powers. Thus, he adopts the alter ego, Deadpool. Armed with his new abilities and a dark, twisted sense of humour, Deadpool hunts down Francis Freeman a.k.a. Ajax (Ed Skrein), the man who nearly destroyed his life, and his sidekick Angel Dust (Gina Carano), alongside fellow X-Men Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) and Colossus (voiced by Stefan Kapičić).

Rating:

It’s not often that a superhero is foul-mouthed, crude, gore-loving, and sadistic – although it is occasional that they are gruesomely disfigured, egotistic, and mentally unstable – but 2016 is the year of the anti-hero, and the “Merc with a Mouth” just became one of our favourite superheroes of them all.

Breaking the boundaries of your average blockbuster and the mould of the superhero films we have become accustomed to, Deadpool may be twisted and vulgar but it’s still a helluva fun time. It has the humour, the action, the confidence to do something a bit gutsy, and it’s exactly the change in formula that we needed to see.

The fourth-wall breaking Deadpool knows that he is a fictional character, and can therefore converse with the audience. This is how the story plays out. In the end, the film only consists of a handful of slow-motion scenes, as Deadpool fills us in on the events that led up to this point.

It’s a brilliant narrative device, with Deadpool’s profanity delivering one of the most hilariously written scripts that Marvel has ever put their trust in. Sometimes we just need a bit of bed-breaking sex, swearing at blind people, and mass amounts of guts and limbs flying at the screen, and that’s exactly what Deadpool provides. Most superhero films have to tone down for a family friendly rating, but just like Reynold’s character, Deadpool couldn’t care less.

Reynolds was definitely made for the role. We may have seen him play Deadpool before in the 2009 film X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but let’s put that film to the back of our mind for the time being, or indefinitely. This is the kind of dedication we need from an actor entering into a cinematic universe, and he’s definitely somebody we want to see more of.