After years of development hell, Ryan Reynolds got his passion project made in the shape of 2016’s Deadpool, in which the Canadian actor played the Merc with a Mouth who likes to break the fourth wall and say something funny and filled with profanity. Released at a time when the superhero movie was thriving, the Tim Miller-directed Deadpool was essentially a parody of the genre, and yet instead of killing it like Blazing Saddles killed the western genre, it only enhanced the superhero boom and Deadpool himself was getting his own franchise. In this current age where the superhero craze might be fading, does Ryan Reynolds once again playing his most iconic role stay relevant?

It has been six years since Deadpool 2 and with the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney, there was a possibility that Deadpool would be integrated with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now back with his R-rated attitude intact, the long-awaited Deadpool & Wolverine seems to be about Wade Wilson going through an existential crisis as whether or not his role as the wisecracking mercenary matters. That crisis is put to the test when the Time Variance Authority pulls Deadpool from his quiet life and sets him on a mission to save his universe, partnering with a reluctant Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) from another universe in the process.

Along with the return of Reynolds as Deadpool, you also have the return of Hugh Jackman in arguably his most iconic role; certainly the role that made him a movie star back in 2000, when the first X-Men movie was released and launched the reemergence of superhero movies. After 2017’s Logan, it felt like the perfect send-off for Jackman’s Wolverine and though this movie tries to have its cake and eat it by not attempting to trample the legacy of James Mangold’s brilliant deconstruction film, there is that sense that Jackman can’t seem to let go of the character.

That said, Reynolds and Jackman are a great double act in their title roles, where one is the straight man and the other is the funny guy, and you probably guess which is which. Although Reynolds’ recent career has been about playing roles that are very similar to Wade Wilson, when he is actually playing Deadpool, you are reminded why he was perfectly cast in that role, even if not everyone is on board with his brand of humor.

As for Jackman, finally rocking the “yellow spandex” in Deadpool & Wolverine that we robbed from all those years, he too reminds why he is perfectly cast as Wolverine whose no-bullshit persona is a nice contrast with Reynolds’ carefree performance. It may not reach the heights of Logan, but if Jackman is to retire from this role after this, it would be a good note to end on.

Since Deadpool & Wolverine is built upon the buddy dynamic between its two leads, what is the movie’s place in the MCU? Well, apart from the TVA from the Loki TV series, this doesn’t leave much of an impact with this well-established shared universe and is actually about looking back at the past.

In a similar vein to Spider-Man: No Way Home, the movie is about nostalgia over a particular period of superhero cinema, specifically in this case when Fox produced their own line-up of Marvel movies, not just the X-Men franchise. With this constant look-back at a studio which is personified here like The Statue of Liberty in Planet of the Apes, there is an over-indulgence of cameos, some of which are delightful and others remind you why the Fox era was a rather maligned time.

Directed by Shawn Levy who co-wrote the Deadpool & Wolverine with Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Zeb Wells, the movie tries to achieve a lot and like the two leads, they got lost in the chaos. Amidst the heavy amount of gore and comedy, as well as a tone that is just as flippant as Deadpool himself, the plot is too paper-thin to give the emotional weight, which is about the eponymous leads becoming heroes as a way of redeeming their past mistakes.

As for Emma Corrin who shines as the main villain Cassandra Nova who can literally get under your skin, there aren’t enough scenes with her, considering she has to share some of the villainy with Matthew Macfadyen’s Mr. Paradox; if only Cassandra was a villain in one of the X-Men movies.

‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ review: Fun buddy comedy stands apart from MCU

Deadpool & Wolverine

Despite the Marvel Studios logo at the beginning, Deadpool & Wolverine has no interest in its role in the MCU except for the occasional joke. As the weakest of the three Deadpool movies, it still works largely as a fun R-rated buddy comedy that showcases the strong chemistry between the two leads.

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Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman own this movie!

From the meta-humor and the gory action, it has everything you want in a Deadpool movie…

…even if the movie itself is overblown with the amount of cameos and plot machinations, that there isn’t much of an emotional angle.

Very little impact on the MCU, which is probably for the best.

Not enough Cassandra Nova.

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When dementia becomes a principal player in any household, the ravages of loss start early. It’s in that unsettling space, in which confusion grips all parties, where Japanese filmmaker Kei Chika-ura fashions his intricately heartsick “Great Absence,” about a callous father’s dementia and an estranged son’s investigation of the past.

Working from an excellent screenplay (by Chika-ura and Keita Kumano) that’s a finely tuned model of narrative empathy, and boasting an all-timer portrait of decline by the great Tatsuya Fuji (“In the Realm of the Senses”), it conveys both keen insight into a tough situation and, at the same time, intriguingly lets some workings of the heart and mind remain impenetrable.

When Tokyo-based actor Takashi (Mirai Moriyama), upon learning that his retired professor dad Yohji (Fuji) has been involved in a disturbing police incident, travels to his island hometown of Kyushu, it’s more out of a grudging sense of responsibility than some act of love. Because for the most part, Takashi, a child of divorce, has stayed away from his father for decades.

With Takashi’s producer wife Yuki (Yoko Maki) along for support, he facilitates Yohji entering a care facility — which the old man is convinced is a prison in another country — and begins sifting through a home to which Yohji is likely never to return. It’s cluttered with not only the remnants of a long life, including the ham radio set-up that became his abiding obsession, but also scrawled how-to reminders everywhere, like the scene of a crime against memory. There is indeed something to solve, however: the fact that Yohji’s dutiful second wife, Naomi (Hideko Hara), the woman he left Takashi’s mother for all those years ago, has seemingly gone missing.

With the reality-challenged Yohji an obviously unreliable source and Naomi’s embittered adult son (Masaki Miura) from her own prior marriage acting cagey about her whereabouts — Takashi’s dad treated his mom “like a housekeeper,” he spits out — Takashi is left to work out the mystery of Yohji’s and Naomi’s life together himself. But he has a rich resource in a thick diary stuffed with letters. What emerges is a complicated, revelatory love story.

Central to the movie’s gathering power is its time-shifting structure, which folds the recent past into the current story like alternating currents. From the flashbacks, which begin with one of Takashi’s tense visits home, we see a long marriage buckling under the increasingly temperamental Yohji’s worsening state — made utterly vivid by Fuji — and steadfast, smiling Naomi’s flagging endurance, which Hara renders with exquisitely underplayed suffering. Yet in the present day, Takashi, absorbing the diary as if researching a tricky role, gradually becomes unmoored by the discovery of an emotional life in his dad that he never knew about, and certainly never sensed from those times when all he could do was weather his disapproving judgment.

“Great Absence,” which nods just enough to its pandemic time frame to imbue an extra tinge of isolating sadness, is as painfully acute as any movie in depicting an aging society’s impact on the next generation. That includes the stark difference in partnerships between Yohji’s and Naomi’s patriarchal marriage, and the more equitable arrangement Takashi and Yuki share, but also in the ripple effects of a difficult man suddenly needing his own help. In its patient but coiled atmosphere and pleasurably firm plotting, Chika-ura has made something novelistic about one man’s dissipating sense of self. But as he disappears, he finds unlikely purchase in his distant son’s consciousness. It makes “Great Absence” a beguiling and touching transference of understanding across time and memory.

Published 26 July 2024, 20:13 IST