This isn't a story about saving the world; it's about a disfigured mercenary hunting down the man who ruined his face. **Deadpool ** explodes onto the screen with sarcasm, satire, and a complete disregard for the rules of the genre. It’s the bloody, R-rated, fourth-wall-shattering anti-hero epic we were waiting for. So, grab your chimichangas, because it’s about to get messy.

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Basic Deets

For real, though, let's get the mundane paperwork out of the way. Not that Deadpool would care.

• Title: Deadpool
• Director: Tim Miller (when he and Ryan Reynolds were still BFFs)
• Starring: Ryan Reynolds (finally), Morena Baccarin, T.J. Miller, Ed Skrein, Gina Carano
• Genre: Superhero… kind of? It's actually more of a "romantic comedy with dismemberment" genre.
• Running Time: A lean, mean, 108 minutes. No flab. All killer, no filler.
• Release Date: February 2016, a Valentine's Day massacre of convention.
• Rating: R. So, so, goriesly R. Like, "leave the kids at a sitter and maybe your easily offended grandma too" R.

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The Lowdown

Wait a minute. You want to know what this movie is actually about? Skip the studio synopsis. I'll get it right for you.

So there's this dude, Wade Wilson. He's a mercenary. An exasperated, morally-flexible hit man with a heart of. not gold, precisely, but maybe like, tarnished brass? He's master at hurting people, he's got a mouth that never shuts, and his life is more dumpster fire than anything. And then he meets Vanessa. And she's perfect. Like, "gets his sense of humor and possibly is crazier than him" perfect. It's real. It's gross and sweet and amazing.

Life is wonderful. Then, plot twist, he gets cancer. Everywhere. The kind that leaves oncologists sweating.

So, a suspicious guy in a suit approaches him with an escape route. An "off-the-books" procedure that'll not just cure him but give him superpowers. Sounds epic, yeah? Wrong. It's a horror story. A secret British pretty-boy villain named Ajax runs a top-secret lab where he literally tortures Wade for weeks on end, activating a mutant gene giving him a healing factor. but turning his entire body into a pizza that had been flipped face-first onto a barbecue.

Wade escapes, recuperates, but is now irretrievably. fugly. His main problem? He needs to find Ajax and get him to fix his face so he can get back to his girl without, you know, traumatizing pre-teens. And he's going to do it in a red suit because why not? That's it. That's the whole setup. It's a revenge story wrapped in a love story, drenched in gasoline and burned.

The Vibe

Bro. The vibe of this movie is a caffeinated squirrel with a machine gun. It's hyper-violently sweet, crudely unapologetic, and so meta it nearly winks at you from the DVD cover. Starting with the literally "A Moody Teen" and "Starring: God's Perfect Idiot" opening credits, you know you're not in for your standard spandex-and-capes romp.

It's like the movie you would make if you were somehow able to obtain a Hollywood budget but kept all your brain-fogged, 4am-in-a-dorm-room ideas. It's frantic. It's personal. The fourth wall isn't just broken, it's smashed to pieces, walked on as confetti, and then inhaled for a laugh. Ryan Reynolds talks directly to us, mocks the studio, taunts Hugh Jackman, and even throws shade on his own career mishaps (Green Lantern, we see you, you stunning disaster). The tone whiplashes from a dude having his hands cut off to an actually endearing moment between Wade and Vanessa. It's a lot. And man, it works.

Shout-Outs

So much of this movie is deserving of a standing ovation. Let's get into it.

Ryan Freaking Reynolds. Duh. This is the performance he was destined to play. All those years playing the smarmy, quippy ladies' man in bad rom-coms were rehearsal for this. He is Wade Wilson. The performance is a god-level fusion of actor and character. The sarcasm, the eye-agony, the wholesale bodily workout. it's beautiful. You can feel 11 years of repressed anger from the X-Men Origins: Wolverine version of the character unloaded all at once, in one glorious, R-rated tsunami. It's a performance for the ages that actually revitalized his career. For more on how he was able to get this passion project finally made, you should absolutely check out the deep dive over at cinewatched.com.

The Action, Man. The action is… gnarly. And tightly choreographed. It's not a series of rapid-fire quick shots and camera shake nonsense. You see everything. The choreography on the highway fight scene is a bloody ballet. Cars, bullets, swords, and one-liners whizzing around. It's visceral. You can feel every slice of katana, every bullet hit. It's creative too! Using a ziplock tape to seal up an open wound? Genius. The way his healing factor is visualized is both disgusting and darkly hilarious. Bones cracking back into place, skin sizzling as it knits itself together… it’s a constant, gross reminder of the curse that comes with his power.

The Heart. Yes, The Heart. Wanna hear something crazy? Underneath all the dick jokes and viscera, this is one of the most genuine love stories in superhero cinema. I’m not kidding. Wade and Vanessa's romance is the emotional center of the whole damn movie. You are supposed to believe it. They are off-the-charts hot. They are not a hero and his princess; they are two broken people who are perfect for each other. When they "compete" with increasingly awful encounters on their first date, it is funnier and more real than most entire romantic comedies. The movie never has any qualms about suggesting that all of this destruction is, subtextually, for her. It's actually… nice in a weird way.

The Supporting Lunatics. T.J. Miller as Weasel, Wade's buddy and bartender, is the perfect sounding board. His deadpan "You're totally ready. Superhero landing!" make me laugh every time. Morena Baccarin brings a lot more nuance than the "girlfriend" role usually gets. She's hard, she's emotional, she's a whole mood. And the X-Men, or in this instance, the two X-Men they could afford—Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead—are used to perfection. Colossus is the good-natured, by-the-book nanny, and NTW is the brooding, eye-rolling teenager. They're ideal foils to Deadpool.

The Niggles

Not gonna lie, for all rule-breaking, it still plays with a few.

The villain, Ajax, is. fine. He's adequate. Ed Skrein is all dressed up for the role and has slimy evil down pat, but he's about as deep as a puddle. He's a Brit guy with a fine coat who's impervious to pain and thoroughly unpleasant. That's… that's the extent of it. His henchwoman Angel Dust (Gina Carano) is not as developed. She's tough and scowls a lot. The movie is so laser-focused on Deadpool himself that the antagonists feel like narrative speedbumps, not truly compelling threats. You’re not really scared he’s gonna lose; you’re just along for the ride to see how he wins.

And every now and then, every now and then, the joke machine gun fires an empty clip. The constant stream of pop-culture reference and one-liners is usually killer, but there's the one dud per batch, every now and then. A line that's just a bit too contrived, a joke that's already outdated before our very eyes. It's a minor quibble, but when your main thrust is comedy, you get the odd stutter.

Lowkey, the plot is also incredibly linear. It's essentially: Get drunk, get powers, kill bad guy, save girl. The non-linear narrative gives it some zip, for certain, but if you chronicled it straight through from beginning to end, it's thinner than the paper in a bargain-basement comic book. The movie knows this, of course, and uses it as a strength—no convoluted world-ending MacGuffin here—but if you’re looking for a complex narrative puzzle, you’ve come to the wrong chili cookoff.

Verdict

Alright, so… where does that leave us?

Rating: 9/10

Seriously. It's almost a perfect execution of a completely insane idea. It did what it intended to do: a gory, profane, hilarious, and surprisingly touching subversion of the superhero genre. It's the adrenaline shot the genre didn't know it needed.

Who it's for: Obviously, if you're easily offended by. well, anything. pack your bags. But if you're an action-comedy fan, if you're so sick of the same superhero shtick, if you love meta-jokes and fourth-wall shenanigans, this is your grail. It's for everyone who ever sat around and thought, "Yeah, but what if a superhero was a giant jerk?"

Who it's NOT for: Your mom. Possibly. Your children. Certainly. Anybody who enjoys their film sophisticated and heroes to be heroic. This ain't that.

Final closing advice? Tuck the kids in, order a pizza, crack open a cold one, and just let the anarchy wash over you. It's a movie-going experience that's like a party you're happy to have been invited to. It's a landmark. A beautiful, R-rated, four-letter-word-spewing landmark. For context on how it stacks up as one of the genre-bending all-timers, cinewatched.com has some death lists. And if you want to know about the production of its incredible cast, headed by the amazing Morena Baccarin, that's another rabbit hole to chase on cinewatched.com.

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References

1. Deadpool on IMDb - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1431045/
2. The Long Road to Deadpool - The Hollywood Reporter - https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/ryan-reynolds-deadpool-movie-910887/
3. Deadpool's Cultural Impact - Vulture - https://www.vulture.com/2016/02/how-deadpool-changed-superhero-movies.html
4. Box Office Mojo - Deadpool - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt1431045/
5. The Real Story Behind the Deadpool Leak - Screen Rant - https://screenrant.com/deadpool-test-footage-leak-story-real/