Ryan Reynolds reprises his Wade Wilson role still full of himself and with his middle finger upturned like before. He himself co-wrote the script, which is full of profanities and f-words, so we’re not surprised that it got an R rating and is strictly not for kids even if one of the major characters in the story is a kid himself.
Wade wants to die so he blows himself up, but to no avail. He is envious of Wolverine because he got to die in “Logan” and Hugh Jackman later on even pops up for a cameo. And this is what sets the film apart. It simply doesn’t want to take itself seriously, even if some very grave things are happening on screen. Even the hilarious credit titles refers to the director now, David Leitch, as the guy who killed the dog in “John Wick”, and the screenplay is said to be written by “the REAL criminals”.
The action-filled opening sequence shows Wade as a ruthless mercenary who goes international killing various criminals, like Yakuza thugs, in different cities worldwide. Wade gets to attack even the henchmen of a drug syndicate in his own city. He then returns to his ladylove, Vanessa (Monica Baccarin), and they celebrate their anniversary, with Ness saying she’s ready to have a baby with him so they can start a family. But the drug lord attacks their home and gets to kill Vanessa instead of him.
In a vision, Wade sees Vanessa in the afterlife and she tells him they cannot make a connection since his heart is not in the right place. Wade doesn’t understand it at first but Colossus comes up and takes him to X-Men’s Xavier Mansion where a boy mutant, Russell Collins, is running amuck for being physically abused by the headmaster and the staff. He has the power to set object on fire with balls of fire that emanate from his hands so he’s called Firefist.
It dawns on Wade that his heart is not in the right place because he wants to kill the boy, so he now helps him and both of them are arrested, with collars tied around their necks to curtail their powers. They are taken to an isolated prison called Icebox. Meantime, a mutant from the future arrives, Cable (Josh Brolin looking like a young Nick Nolte), whose mission is to kill Russell so he can avoid a family tragedy later on.
Wade then organizes a team of mutants to fight Cable and save Russell, recruiting Domino, Bedlam, Shatterstar, Zeitgeist, Vanisher and a normal guy named Peter to form a team he calls the X-Force. They try to assault the prison truck transporting prisoners from Icebox by leaping from a plane and parachuting down below. This turns into a veritable comedy of errors that ends in disaster.
Russell manages to free another dangerous mutant, the Juggernaut, to be his ally. Cable then teams up with Deadpool to fight Russell and the Juggernaut. Colossus later arrives to also help them. What follows is a lengthy climactic action sequence that will surely please action fans. As Wade himself announces: “Big CGI Fight coming up right here!” When Cable beats him up, Wade blurts out: “You’re so dark. Do you come from the DC Universe?”
There are many other forms of “kulitan” jokes that make fun of other movies, from “Terminator” and “Avengers” to “Harry Potter”, “Robocop”, “Frozen” and “Basic Instinct” with Ryan criss-crossing his legs that are the legs of a little boy. It also makes fun of Fox News, Batman, James Bond, Say Anything, Justin Bieber and even Canada.
Another pleasing element is the movie’s soundtrack, with Dolly Parton’s ‘9 to 5’ used to choreograph a fight scene, and the “Tomorrow” song from “Annie” used in another important scene. Other songs used are “All Out Love”, “More than a Feeling”, “I Could Turn Back Time” and “In Your Eyes”, giving the fight scenes an unusual flavor. And yes, Ryan even sings Barbra’s “Papa, Can You Hear Me” from “Yentl” while comparing its melody with that of “Do You Want to Build a Snowman” from “Frozen”.
It’s obvious that Ryan Reynolds is fully committed to his role as Wade and to the project as a whole. Even with his face disfigured, his charisma remains intact and it’s his energetic attitude that pulls him through. He’s well supported by Josh Brolin as Cable (his second villain role after appearing as Thanos in “Avengers: Infinity War”), Leslie Uggams as the funny Blind Al, TJ Miller and Karan Soni as his bumbling sidekicks Weasel and the Indian Dopinder, Julian Dennison as Firefist, Zazie Beetz as the asskicking Domino, with Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Shioli Kutsuna as her girlfriend Yukio.
Don’t leave the theatre right away as there are two additional sequences during the end credits and they’re worth staying for a couple more of minutes. In one scene, Negasonic and Yukio is able to modify Cable’s time-travelling watch to do several jobs, including saving Vanessa from her death and saving Ryan Reynolds from doing his “Green Lantern” film which turned out then to be a dismal flop. And with “Deadpool 2” being a big blockbuster at the box office, we can now expect to have “Deadpool 3” in a couple of years from now.
