Director: David Leitch
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, TJ Miller, Josh Brolin, Morena Baccarin
Rating: 4/5
When Deadpool was first released, it caught the attention of the world for all the right reasons. Built on a paltry budget of $58 million and an R rating, the film went on to become one of the biggest hits of the year, both commercially and critically.
Therefore, it was all but certain that Fox would produce a sequel, and they finally have. Deadpool is back, and he is here to up the ante.
The film starts off on the standard Deadpool note — bad guys dying at the hand of the Merc with a Mouth in various degrees of horrifying and comical, and Wade Wilson getting it on with his girlfriend.
But when unidentified red shir... I mean, bad guys decide to do a house call, it gets personal for Wade (Ryan Reynolds), leaving him with an uncomfortably realistic sense of loss and guilt.
Meanwhile, Thanos, or rather Cable (Josh Brolin), a grumpy man arrives from the future with a score to settle and a kid to kill. And it just so happens that Wade has, by way of a series of unfortunate events, been thrown into a prison with the same kid following an altercation.
What follows is a colourful, if somewhat inconsistently paced and relentlessly bloody odyssey, as Wade, Weasel and Dopinder head to LinkedIn to gather a group of super-powered individuals to try and stop Cable.
The film provides Deadpool’s signature humour — crass, unfiltered and laden with cusses — mostly uncensored, except for a few muted words. There is an occasional 'Canada' thrown in for good measure with enough CGI action and plenty of fourth-wall breaking that Deadpool became beloved for.
It’s filled with the same excellent choice of music and character dynamics, deftly balancing the evolving quirks of established characters while introducing new ones almost effortlessly.
However, the film does seem to suffer from the departure of director Tim Miller. While David Leitch is by no means a sub-par director, the film does struggle to keep up with the kind of pace the first Deadpool used to incredible effect. There also seems to be a bit of a disconnect in the presentation of the first and second halves of the film.
But, with the return of Rhese and Wernick as writers, and Ryan Reynolds supplementing them, the writing remains crisp and fresh throughout. I also have an issue with some of the CGI used, particularly in the second act, but like the entire film, I can’t shake the feeling that it was deliberately made that way as a running gag.
Overall, while the first film may have been a radical way of laying the foundation for a new playground, the first half of Deadpool 2 feels like a competent, if safe effort to build on it. The second half, though, is an entirely different beast altogether and manages to construct an incredible playground filled with humour, heart and a message to provide.