by Alan Yudman

DEADPOOL is not like any super hero genre movie you have ever seen. That is obvious from the first shot and through the opening credits. It may be better than any super hero movie you have ever seen. “Pool” is definitely super, but he wants no part of this “hero” nonsense. He is a former Army Ranger who is now a vigilante for hire. You pay the money, he will take care of whoever needs taking care of. He is diagnosed with terminal cancer and approached by a guy who says he can cure him and make him better than he ever was, but he as to work for their organization. While Pool (Wade Wilson is his real name) dismisses the guy initially, he eventually sees this as the only way he won’t die of cancer. So he submits to their procedure which is more like torture and his torturer is Ajax (played by Ed Skrein), a man who has undergone the procedure that activates your mutant gene (yup, X-Men). Ajax’s mutation is he cannot feel anything. In Pool, that gene is the one that fights off his cancer and allows him self-heal. Nothing can kill him. The side effect is that he looks like, well as TJ Miller’s character put it, “an avocado who had sex with an older avocado”. He’s horrific to look at. He can’t go back to his girl (Morena Baccarin), so he seeks revenge on Ajax by becoming DEADPOOL. The exposition of the origin story is cleverly executed through a series of flashbacks while DEADPOOL is hunting Ajax. It sounds lie any origin story, but the genius here is the script. It is absolutely, fantastically uproariously insane. Ryan Reynolds is perfect as DEADPOOL. His sense of humor and snarkiness are the perfect compliment to the batshit crazy dialogue. The film is hysterically self-aware. Mocking every trope while embracing them all. It makes fun of Reynolds one-time “sexiest man alive” status, his failed role as Green Lantern, all of the X-Men. No one is spared. That doesn’t mean Stan Lee didn’t approve. He has a cameo as per usual. I absolutely loved it. I didn’t want it to end. And, of course there is a post-credits scene. This is a hard R super hero movie for explicit violence, nudity and sexual situations. Yeah, that’s right. A hard R Marvel movie. Maybe the studio realizes everything cannot be sanitized or so self-serious. DEADPOOL isn’t the hero movie we want. It may be the hero movie we need.