"Deadpool"

By Matt Duncan
Coastal View News

If you want to be a superhero, you’ve got to get certain things right. You have to be moral, dignified, and honorable. You have to do nice things all the time. You have to have a booming voice that promotes peace, goodness, capital T Truth, and so on. You have to have a good strong, descriptive name like Superman, or Wonder Woman, or the Flash. You have to care about people, especially the disadvantaged ones. And you have to have a nice face—you’ve got to be a looker.

Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) has none of these things. He is a crass, brutal, irreverent, deeply flawed, alto who couldn’t care less about peace, goodness, or capital T anything, who is named after an office pool based on who will die next, and who once had quite a nice face but now looks—well, there are plenty of apt albeit R-rated descriptions of his mangled state in the movie, but suffice it to say, he’s no looker. Deadpool describes himself as a bad guy who goes after worse guys. That’s about right.

Now, it used to be he was a fairly ordinary guy—he didn’t do superhero stuff, exactly—with a wicked sense of humor and a lovely girlfriend (Vanessa—Morena Baccarin). But then he gets some bad test results from his doctor and goes off and does something stupid: He signs up for a program that promises to cure him of his ailment and, ahem, you know, turn him into a superhero.

The deal turns out to be not quite as advertised. This guy, Ajax (Ed Skrein), and this gal, Angel Dust (Gina Carano), pretty well abuse Deadpool. They inject him with some superhero juice, but then just torture him—mostly for fun it seems. He ends up looking pretty mangled.

But also kind of superhero-ish. His main thing is he can heal really fast. So he is more-or-less invincible. He is also really fast, strong, and good at fighting (not sure if that is the superhero juice, or just practice). But he is not particularly nice or moral. He does not fight crime. He is only interested in tracking down Ajax and company in hopes of a cure so that he can return unashamed and whole to his lovely girlfriend.

You can imagine how the plot plays out. But this movie has a light enough touch that it never feels pat or boring. Whereas some movies like this can tend to feel like a marathon sprint with a 100-pound pack, this one feels more like a jog in the park. Some movies like this try too hard to look like they aren’t trying too hard. But “Deadpool” feels effortless.

“Deadpool” is nothing if not fun. I can imagine people saying this movie is just O.K., or nothing exceptional, but, as long as they can abide the crassness and over-the-top gore, I cannot imagine too many people saying they didn’t like it at all. It really is fabulously entertaining.

First of all, the action sequences are a ton of fun to watch. The combat choreography is very well done. It is fast, but not “I can’t see what’s going on” or “I think I’m going to have a headache” kind of fast.

This movie is also funny. Sometimes the quick-draw, irreverent humor is a little too persistent for my taste. But most of the time it works. Deadpool always has one eye on the camera, one tongue in cheek, and all of his wits aimed at brutally mocking superhero tropes. It is a worthy target, and, for the most part, “Deadpool” doesn’t miss.

So, you know, go see “Deadpool”. It’s good.