Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Deadpool 2



DIRECTOR: David Leitch  LEAD CAST: Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Stefan Kapicic (voice)Zazie Beetz, Julian Dennison  SCREENWRITERS: Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Ryan Reynolds  PRODUCERS: Simon Kinberg, Ryan Reynolds, Lauren Shuler Donner  EDITORSCraig Alpert, Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir, Dirk Westervelt  MUSICAL DIRECTOR: Tyler Bates  GENRE: Fantasy/Science Fiction  CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jonathan Sela  DISTRIBUTOR: Warner Bros.  LOCATION: British Columbia, Canada  RUNNING TIME: 119 minutes 
Technical assessment4 
Moral assessment2.5 
CINEMA ratingV18 
MTRCB ratingR16 
The guy who played Thanos in The Avengers is back, but this time, he’s not Thanos but grief-stricken Cable (Josh Brolin) who returns from the future to exterminate young Russel (Julian Dennison). The boy it turns out is to become the ruthless Firefist who will kill Cable’s family and many othersBut mercenary assassin turned superhero with a foul-mouth and sick humor Wade aka Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) saves the boy. He assembles X-Force, with Colossus (voiced by Stefan Kapicic)Domino (Zazie Beetz), and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) to stop Russel from becoming the annihilator.  
Deadpool gathers several Marvel superheroesincluding the X-Men, with Wade pejoratively referred to as an X-Men trainee. He flunks the training of course, because he defies discipline. And with his penchant for “breaking the fourth wall”, Wade again talks directly to the audience as he lampoons Marvel and DC superheroes, and even DisneyHe ridicules Frozen, Yentl, RoboCopAvengersX-Men and many morePeople who are not familiar with these movies may get lost and find the plot nonsensicalWade basks in his craziness and the rest patiently allows him to do soWhat aids it all is good timing. Ryan Reynolds as Wade is crass with the stoic Colossus who by the way is CGI, but on screen together, they elicit so much laughter. The tempo is as eccentrically unpredictable as the twisted humor of the movie. Russel’s hands look genuinely on fire and burning like steel. The Juggernaut is a bit grotesque, it looks like a cracked steel egg that is more hilarious than forebodingThe fight scenes, albeit computer generated, are interspersed with Wade’s sick humor that they are not at all boring. And the soundtrack is as absurdly appropriate. 
The movie is so entertaining (not extraordinary but definitely not the usual run-of-the-mill fantasy comedy)  that it saddens us that we can’t recommend it for kids. There’s excessive use of cuss words, sexual innuendoes, decapitation, and everything violent. The bizarre comedy has become so delectable that we feel there are not enough cues to help young audiences decipher the movie’s key message. And that message, buried deep under a multitude of dissonance, is actually beautiful and sublime: there’s a good side to every person. Evil is not genetic, it is not a malignant deformity that we are born with. Sure, some have a predisposition to violence and mad temper. But such behavior doesn’t automatically make us mass murderers and annihilators. Wade’s life is a testament to that: he is a rogue assassin and mercenary turned superhero. Good news is, we as humans can help curb the bad in our neighbor, and help cultivate the good in themLike salt of the earth. (ME) 
PS:  CINEMA notes one subtle message so important it opens and closes Deadpool 2: we need family, we need to belong.  Family (or the tragic loss of it) serves as motivation for the story arc: as Wade’s fiancée Vanessa gives up her IUD (intra uterine device) as a gift to Wade, the pair decide to start a family but Vanessa is killed in an attack; Cable is out to hunt down his family’s murderer; the orphans, deprived of family, are exploited in the mutant re-education center where Domino, herself orphaned, was raised; 14-year-old Russell, who almost becomes a killer, cannot trust anybody as his surrogate family in the orphanage abuses him.  In the end, Wade himself says it loud and clear: we need family, we need to belong.