The superhero with a sardonic twist

Marvel’s latest is a trippy tale from the X-Men universe of characters

February 13, 2016 12:00 am | Updated 05:38 am IST

Even if you aren’t a hard core fanboy, the title sequence would give you a clue about Deadpool’s edgy DNA — the cast include “sulky teenager”, “gratuitous cameo”, and “British villain” among other hilarious descriptions. The eighth instalment in the X-Men film series, Deadpool tells the story of anti-hero Wade Wilson, who fights cancer and emerges a slightly insane, terribly scarred superhero with a cool sense of humour.

So Wade is this ex-Special Forces guy who is now a mercenary. He meets and falls in love with an escort, Vanessa and just when life seems a bed of roses, he discovers he has cancer.

A shady Agent Smith-type person offers to help him and introduces him to Ajax, who is your standard issue, raving psychopath with a ‘propah’ British accent, and mean superpowers. Horrific experiments and terrible torture follow leaving Wade cured, but with a face “like an avocado had sex with an older avocado”. He swears revenge on Ajax and all sorts of merry mayhem follows.

The throwaways are fun including Dipender, the cabbie with a fondness for old Bollywood songs, and his tragic, unrequited love story, the X-Men riffs, Wham!, Sigourney Weaver in Alien 3 , Sinead O’Connor and all round attitude. Most of the funniest lines are unprintable and censors play spoilsport as well bleeping them out.

Tim Miller, who did the title sequence for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (look what Trent Reznor did with Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song , whoo hoo!) makes an assured directorial debut.

Ryan Reynolds plays the lead character and apparently got attracted to the project after learning that Deadpool refers to his appearance as “Ryan Reynolds crossed with a Shar-Pei”. Morena Baccarin brings on tough love in her turn as Vanessa. Ed Skrein, who we last saw as Frank Martin in that sad Transporter reboot plays insane Ajax. TJ Miller is best friend Weasel, while Brianna Hildebrand is Negasonic Teenage Warhead (the coolest name as Deadpool comments).

The tone of the movie felt kind of confused — edgy yet not pushing the envelope far enough — which is thanks to the censors who have chopped off the extreme language, violence and sex. The other worrying thing is if edgy becomes mainstream, then the electric underground runs the danger of turning vanilla. The horror of it. Oh, and do wait for the credits to roll for the customary Marvel post-credit sequence.

Deadpool

Director: Tim Miller

Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein, T J Miller, Gina Carano, Brianna Hildebrand, Stefan Kapièiæ, Leslie Uggams

Run Time: 108 mins

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