The original Deadpool became the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time, so that leaves the question: Where do the filmmakers go from there? Answer: Deadpool 2. This sequel definitely delivers all the irreverence, over-the-top violence, and fourth-wall breaking the original gave us, but it’s not quite Deadpool either. Not quite.
Ryan Reynolds was born to play the Merc With a Mouth and he delivers another winning performance. This time around, he’s forced with protecting a mutant kid who calls himself Firefist (Julian Dennison) from the hands of a time-traveling super-soldier named Cable (Josh Brolin) from killing him. If anyone is having a great year right now, it’s Brolin as he’s two at bats and two home runs with his work in this as well as Avengers: Infinity War.
Deadpool reluctantly takes on the role of the Terminator (I mean, protector) and assembles the Avengers (I mean, another team) to help keep the kid away from Cable and he calls this group X-Force. The team is made up some terrific actors who display some rather conventional albeit awesome superpowers: Terry Crews plays Bedlam, who serves as a human EMP, Lewis Tan is Shatterstar, who sends shockwaves, Zazie Beetz is Domino whose superpower is that she’s lucky and when I say, I mean lucky. And of course, there is Peter (Rob Delaney) who has no powers except that he has Type 1 and 2 Diabetes. He just saw the ad and thought it looked like fun.
The rest of the movie is pretty much Deadpool fare: He breaks the fourth wall, makes endless amounts of pop culture references (Everything from The Avengers to The Passion of the Christ gets a wink) and it’s not without cranking out ’80s from Cher and Pat Benatar.
Perhaps Brolin’s Cable offers the best supporting performance in the movie as a character who arrives to do one thing and ends up not being whom you think he will be by the end. It’s actually a pretty complex performance and given the fact that the material tries to provide a lot more depth especially with the nature of family, that’s saying something.
The movie’s only weakness is that it doesn’t have the freshness of the original and it occasionally stalls from plot overload. The first movie was lightning in a bottle for its genre and it would be impossible to expect anything less. I loved how the first one poked fun at the genre’s conventions and put a completely refreshing spin, but in Deadpool 2, it never reaches the same heights and the result doesn’t have as much effect.
However, just when the film feels somewhat bogged down by a few contrivances, there’s always a healthy dose of sensational action, and some truly hilarious one-liners and even some of those are more visual than verbal as in one scene involving Deadpool’s legs.
One thing is for sure: Deadpool is a great, one-of-a-kind character for the genre and I’m hoping we’ll get to see Deadpool 3 in the next couple of years.
Note: This movie has multiple mid-credit scenes and the last ones constitute what may go down as the most hilarious in movie history. I couldn’t think of anything more perfectly obvious.
Grade: A-
(Rated R for strong violence and language throughout, sexual references, and brief drug material.)
