Few mainstream movies are truly radical. After all, Hollywood is generally a risk-averse place. They make movies that assuage, not challenge conventions. They leave the wacky and threatening ideas to the indies and foreign films.
“Deadpool” is the exception to the rule. A super-hero flick based on a character few non-comics readers have probably even heard of, it’s violent, foul-mouthed and flippant. The protagonist is an unlikeable heel who talks directly to the audience, insults his enemies and makes no pretense at heroic deeds.
Ryan Reynolds – who previously played another iteration of the same character in (one of) the underwhelming Wolverine movies – is a charming cad as Wade Wilson, a mercenary who hurts or kills people for money. He makes no bones about his profession or status on the good/bad scale.
His happiness grows when he unexpectedly finds love with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), a prostitute with a heart of diamonds. But then he is diagnosed with terminal cancer.
He accepts a longshot chance at a cure by accepting experimental treatment from a mysterious criminal group that promises to turn him into a super-hero. The process works, after incredible pain and suffering, giving him the ability to heal virtually any wound. But it also leaves him a scarred freak.
Redubbing himself Deadpool, he launches a crusade to kill the bad guy, fix his face and get the girl back. Needless to say, there are complications along the way. Opposing, then joining him on this quest are a pair of down-market X-Men. (Deadpool himself quips that they couldn’t afford any of the expensive ones.)
Shot on a $50 million budget – peanuts for super-hero CGI and stunts – “Deadpool” is a four-letter middle finger to the establishment. Rookie director Tim Miller and script guys Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have fashioned a movie that’s a true rebel yell.
Extras are very good. These include two feature-length audio commentary tracks, one with Reynolds and the screenwriters, the other with director Miller and Deadpool co-creator Rob Liefeld; deleted and extended scenes with audio commentary by Miller; gag reel; photo galleries; and two making-of featurettes: “Deadpool’s Fun Sack” and “From Comics to Screen… to Screen.”
I think it was around the time that Deadpool farted into the face of an elderly black lady that I realized we weren’t dealing with a standard-issue superhero.
If that wasn’t the moment, then it arrived immediately after, when he needled her: “Hashtag: drive by!”
If “Guardians of the Galaxy” set the stage for comic book adaptations that were comedies first, action/adventure second, then “Deadpool” is the next step on the (d?)evolutionary scale: super heroes as gross-out laugh riots.
Golly, this movie is funny. And crude. And lewd. Even as I was watching it I thought to myself: “I can’t believe Marvel made this movie.” But I am very glad they did.
Things start with the opening credits, a freeze-frame journey of the camera around a scene of mayhem, a vehicle in mid-flight as Deadpool takes out some bad guys. As we pan and zoom around to reveal that Deadpool has his fingers poking a dude’s eyes out and the other hand giving another guy a wedgie, the credits mock themselves.
The film, we are informed, stars “a British villain,” “a CGI character” and “a moody teen,” amongst others, and was directed by “an overpaid tool.” A magazine flies by in the swirl, and it’s Ryan Reynolds’ “Sexiest Man Alive” cover of People.
Things continue as Deadpool repeatedly talks to the camera, reminding us that he’s a movie character. He breaks the fourth wall, then quips about breaking the fourth wall, then does a flashback where he again breaks the fourth wall. “That’s, like, 16 walls!” he brags.
The setup is that Wade Wilson (Reynolds) is a badboy mercenary, a smirking ex-Special Forces expert now accepting money to do bad things to people even worse than him. He catches the perfect girl, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), who shares his puckish humor and love of exploring every sexual position available. (A montage shows many, and much.)
But then he gets terminal cancer, which sucks, and signs on to a shadowy group that promises to not only cure him, but give him super abilities. This they do – he can heal virtually any wound a la Wolverine -- except it also involves turning him into a scarred freak who looks like Freddie Krueger’s next of kin.
Dubbing himself Deadpool, he resolves to hunt down the dastardly villain who did this to him, Ajax (Ed Skrein), get him to do a face fix, kill him, and win the girl back.
If this doesn’t sound like noble proselytizing about great power coming with great responsibility, that’s because it isn’t. Deadpool explicitly rejects the idea of being a hero, happily kills anyone who gets in his way and drops one-liners while doing it.
Deadpool also criticizes his own movie as it’s playing out, simultaneously acting as protagonist and nitpicking fanboy.
For instance, he has a run-in with Colossus from the X-Men (voice of Stefan Kapičić) and a young trainee (Brianna Hildebrand), then later recruits them to help him. Rolling up to Xavier mansion, Deadpool takes note that despite being such a big place, he’s only ever seen these two members of the team.
“It’s almost like the studio couldn’t afford another X-Man!” he zings.
At a reported $50 million budget, “Deadpool” is indeed a down-market spawn of the Marvel franchise. I will say that director Tim Miller milks every dollar of that budget, resulting in a great-looking film without any obvious cut corners. OK, Colossus looks a little cut-rate, not to mention very different from his previous movie appearances.
I should mention that Reynolds previously played the same character in 2009’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” but the filmmakers are doing a total reboot and hope you’ll completely forget about that iteration of Deadpool. (Don’t worry, guys, already done.)
Also turning up are T. J. Miller as Deadpool’s wiseacre best friend, who supports him but isn’t above betting on his demise; Gina Carano as Ajax’s burly enforcer; and Leslie Uggams as the aforementioned blind lady, who’s also Deadpool’s roommate at a ghetto rattrap.
(Hey, not every supe has Tony Stark money.)
Tim Miller was an interesting pick to direct, a first-timer who comes from a visual effects background. (His salary and tool-ishness are open to debate.) He certainly gives us plenty of eye candy and a brash tone. And screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who previously brought comedy to the horror genre with “Zombieland,” crank the yuks dial up to 11 and then somehow manage to sustain it the rest of the way.
How hilarious is “Deadpool?” You’ll spend the entire time laughing, coming off a big laugh or cursing audience members for laughing so long you missed the next joke.
Welcome to the new age of super hero movies: funny, foulmouthed and farty.
Here's the thing about the "Fast & Furious" movies: they're cartoons.
I would think this is fairly obvious to anyone who's watched even five minutes of the series -- the high-speed chase sequences that flaunt the laws of physics, the muscle-bound lunks strutting and blustering, the emaciated hoochies with incongruous combat skills.
The whole enterprise is garish and bogus, like sun-tan lotion smeared over plastic surgery scars.
There's nothing inherently wrong with cartoonish movies -- when they recognize and accept their just-for-kicks nature. But "Fast & Furious 6," like all its predecessors, takes itself way, way too seriously to allow any fun.
At least a half-hour too long at 130 minutes, it interrupts its infrequent car chases with lots of scenes where Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson growl their dialogue, usually at each other. We also have a new villain, Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), who's so busy telling everyone how much smarter he is than them he keeps making obvious mistakes.
Oh, and Michelle Rodriguez, who was pretty definitively offed earlier in the franchise, somehow is brought back with that ol' standby of the lazy screenwriter, amnesia. It's not a very convincing device, nor does it explain away the fact that leader Dom Toretto (Diesel) had already replaced his dead girlfriend with a new one.
Director Justin Lin, who has now helmed all the "Fast" movies except the first two, appears to have simply grown bored with car chases. There's more hand-to-hand fighting than driving, and what road action that remains is muddled and over-caffeinated, like a yippy little dog that barks so furiously it chokes itself. Screenwriter Chris Morgan, also back for his fourth go-round, hasn't improved with experience.
If you'll remember from the last movie -- and why would you? -- Dom and his team of racer-thieves had successfully heisted $100 million in cash. As the story opens they're living the quiet life of luxury as expat criminals. Then their nemesis lawman, Hobbs (Johnson), shows up with proof that Letty (Rodriguez), Dom's old squeeze, is alive and working for Shaw.
Shaw's exact motivations remain a mystery ... something about stealing computer chips from the U.S. government worth billions. He's got his own crackerjack team of tech specialists, plus some cool low-slung cars that can act like ramps for pursuing vehicles, sending them hurtling.
Brian O'Conner, the former cop-turned-criminal played by Paul Walker, is largely shunted to the side in this outing, other than a set-up about being a new daddy and therefore less wild than the old days.
Also returning are Tyrese Gibson as comic relief Roman, Ludacris as hacker Tej, and Sung Kang and Gal Gadot as crime couple Han and Gisele.
Dom & Co. have plenty of cash and little reason to help out the feds, other than finding out if Letty is really alive. It's the familiar claptrap about sticking together.
Diesel does that strange thing he does where he turns his head sideways to the camera, not looking at the person he's talking to while spouting some heavy-sounding gibberish. Like, "You don't turn your back on your family. Even when they do."
The movie occasionally finds the right gear with some particular piece of roadway mayhem -- a sequence where the good guys take on a tank comes to mind. But whenever the movie detours into characters just standing around talking, it's a complete wipeout.
"Haywire" is a gimmick movie, and not a very good one. Its entire premise is built around the now-ubiquitous figure of the globe-trotting super-spy, a la Jason Bourne, who has amazing hand-to-hand combat skills. Except in this case, the butt-kicker supreme is a woman -- specifically, novice actress and MMA star Gina Carano.
Director Steven Soderbergh doesn't do anything particularly bold or imaginative with this tired genre other than flip the gender of the protagonist. It's almost as if he and screenwriter Lem Dobbs are saying, "See! We can make a movie with a female lead where the characters are just as stilted, the combat is just as repetitions and the plot just as much a nonsensical bramble as one starring a dude."
Imagine any Jason Statham movie with long hair and breasts, and you've pretty much got the flavor.
The film stars a lot of recognizable male actors -- Channing Tatum, Ewan McGregor, Antonio Banderas, Michael Fassbender -- most of whom get into fisticuffs with Carano, seemingly just to see them get pasted by a girl.
Carano, who resembles Rachel Weisz on human growth hormones, isn't asked to do much beyond scowl and kick. If the movie's entire reason for existence is to prove that a woman can be convincing as a brutish action star, then Carano certainly passes muster.
If, on the other hand, the idea is to create a believable, identifiable character and see how they react to seemingly insurmountable circumstances, then this mixed martial artist is out of her league.
Soderbergh keeps threatening to retire from movie-making, and un-clever projects like this don't exactly give us a reason to convince him to stick around.
Extra features, which are the same for both Blu-ray and DVD editions, are mercifully brief. There's "Gina Carano in Training," a 16-minute featurette whose title says it all, and the 5-minute "The Men of Haywire," which also pretty much says it all.
