DEADPOOL

(Tim Miller, 2016)

Odd how many superhero movies forget to be fun. They’re so busy being important and earth-shattering and awesome that they forget the central joy of the genre; it is fun. Well, not Deadpool. Deadpool strains every sinew in order to keep the audience entertained throughout. Generally that’s through humour, with a string of groan-inducing gags and one-liners mixed into all the slapstick and pop-culture references. And of course the post-modern fourth wall breaking, a long-time feature of the character’s comic book appearances. This Deadpool, played charmingly by Ryan Reynolds, knows he is in a superhero movie, stops to talk to the audience, acknowledges genre conventions and alludes to budgetary constraints and Reynolds’ own checkered career.  Some of this works really well (the audience I saw Deadpool with audibly enjoyed the movie more than any movie I have seen in a long time) and sometimes it doesn’t. The plot is a slight thing, mostly told in mid-fight scene flashback by Deadpool himself, aka Wade Wilson, a mercenary who has just fallen in love with his prostitute soulmate Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) when he is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Desperate, he volunteers for experimental procedure controlled by Ajax (Ed Skrein) and Angel Dust (Gina Carano), bestowed with the ability to feel no pain and super strength respectively.

This procedure will activate his latent mutant gene, but only after a series of grisly tortures. In the aftermath, Wilson is hideously ugly but also virtually unkillable, with a Wolverine-style healing factor to add to his pre-existing skill with gun and sword. He also has a score to settle with Ajax, which he does by killing his way through a series of underlings.

Set in a corner of the X-Men universe (but also featuring a big visual wink to the Marvel Universe), Deadpool also brings in Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead, if only to allow its hero to poke fun at their team and attitudes. But then this is a character who works best when he has somebody to talk to and bounce off, and his scenes with them are among the best in the film.

The action scenes are fine and there are a lot of them, and if the script is frequently crude, a little too broad and unfunny, well Reynolds has the comic chops and timing to sell it anyway. Crucially it nails a tone. It doesn’t quite feel like any other film in the superhero genre, certainly not like any of the films which have parodied the genre in the past. Its violence and post-modern sensibility make it a different beast, as does its surprisingly sincere love story and seedy little setting.

Oh yeah: and it’s fun.

MISSISSIPPI GRIND

(Ana Boden, Ryan Fleck, 2016)

Boden and Fleck are such careful filmmakers, it tends to make their films play at an odd remove. Here they take this scruffy little genre hybrid - two gamblers meet cute, bond, and set off on a road trip to earn some more money, all the while watching their own relationship change and twist with each revelation and decision - and make of it a scrupulously middling indie movie, distinguished mainly by excellent performances by Ryan Reynolds and (especially) Ben Mendelsohn as the gamblers.
They are intelligent directors, and Mississippi Grind pays the right kind of attention to setting and location, so that the film feels thick with place. But even that feels careful, a little by the numbers; there are nicely weighted shots of locations in each town, as if programmed by a computer versed in filmmaking 101. A late reveal of the identity, occupation and character of Reynolds' mother should be crushing, but it feels cynical. The final splurge is refreshing in its outcome, but feels oddly like a coda, after Mendelsohn has earlier shown his truest colours with lies and risks taken to support his gambling habit.
But those performances are worth it; Reynolds showing a melancholy and darkness behind his charm, Mendelsohn all last-chance desperation and blown-out self-awareness. They have genuine chemistry, too. And if overall it never lives up to Altman's California Split, well: what does? More of a problem is how a movie like John Dahl's Rounders feels more alive and full of characters.

SAFE HOUSE

(Daniel Espinosa, 2012)

Safe House functions as perhaps the ultimate compliment to Director Tony Scott (who has no involvement here). Featuring his usual leading man in Denzel Washington, making extremely pungent, evocative use of a distinctive location (in this case Cape Town), shot and cut with a hyperactive, almost exaggerated beauty and no little style, and full of action scenes staged for maximum violence and brutality, Espinosa's action-thriller appears to assume Scott as a sub-genre in his own right.
As such, it's a decent, if somewhat generic Tony Scott film.
Ryan Reynolds takes the lead here, allowing Washington to assume the same sort of almost mythic bogie man role he took in Training Day. Washington plays Tobin Frost, an ex-CIA Agent gone rogue and trading secrets who has come into possession of a crucial computer file when he is cornered by a team of assassins in Cape Town and, desperate, hands himself in at a US Consulate. Delivered to a Safe House run by frustrated junior agent Reynolds, Washington's interrogation is interrupted when the assassins assault the house and kill the CIA Extraction team, forcing Reynolds to flee with his prisoner. The usual game of cat and mouse, double-cross and shoot and punch follows.
That is a little unfair. The plot is never riveting, but the story mechanics generally work and the odd adversarial relationship between Reynolds and Washington drive that. Reynolds plays the whole thing as if his character is a confused boy; always frightened, always unsure, generally on the edge of complete collapse. Its a slightly constricted, one-note performance, but then the script doesn't give him much else to do beyond the action stuff. At least that action stuff is often extremely well-done; each of the gun battles and car chases are exciting, visceral experiences. Best are the fist fights: in this post-Bourne world, they are gripping, brutal struggles to the death, convincingly exhausting in their physicality. Espinosa shoots it all with vivid colours and designer grit to the fore.
Washington gets his fair share of action too, but mainly he lends that intelligent poised movie star presence to his part; his character is always the smartest person in the room. That's what Denzel brings, that and tried, true charisma. The supporting cast backs him up; filled with classy character actors like Brendan Gleeson, Vera Farmiga, Liam Cunningham and Sam Shepherd, who do a great job of selling such material.
The real star here, however, is South Africa itself, and Cape Town in particular, captured as a bustling, beautiful, cruel city by Espinosa, a fine stage in which his action sequences unfold.

GREEN LANTERN

(Martin Campbell, 2011)

Much as fanboys like to bitch online about movie adaptations not remaining faithful enough to original comic material, some super-hero movies are evidence of just why it's necessary to alter a few details to make a more successful movie. Martin Campbell's big, generic, over-familiar Green Lantern being one. It's extremely faithful to the details of the DC Comics character whose adventures it is based upon. And that's a big part of the problem.
Instead of streamlining the mythology, Green Lantern tries to fit too much in and ends up skimming over the surface of most of the harder sci-fi material, giving the sequences where our hero travels to the base-planet of the
Lantern Corps for a crash course in superheroing no dramatic weight and far less impact than they deserve. This is a Superhero who should carry a degree of awe when he appears. As the film tells us repeatedly, the ring is the most powerful weapon in the universe, capable of creating whatever the bearer can imagine, yet all Hal Jordan can come up with are big guns, giant race tracks, a massive fist and fighter jets. This is symptomatic of the lack of imagination displayed throughout. The scenes where he learns to use the ring play just like the instructional levels from a video game, and the rigorous adherence to a three act structure makes for a more predictable and forgettable narrative than is necessary.
Some scenes appear copied from Superman and Spider-Man, only less effectively delivered, and the central conflict - Jordan's reluctance to become a super-hero because he might not be good enough - makes a bore of our protagonist and wastes much of Ryan Reynolds' easy charm. The climax is perfunctory, even lazy, and characters - Jordan's family, bafflingly introduced in one scene apparently to humanise such a selfish hero, together with a criminally wasted Angela Bassett as a Government Scientist - disappear from the story without explanation.
There are good things. Mark Strong and Peter Sarsgaard are both working in a different, better film, Dion Beebe's photography glows when it's not lost in a CGI murk, and the effects are generally splendid.
But in a world where Super-hero films with the ambition and range of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight and Brad Bird's The Incredibles exist, that's not enough.