Morena Baccarin – Consumed By Film

Director: Tim Miller

Release Date: February 10th, 2016 (UK); February 12th, 2016 (US)

Genre: Action; Adventure; Comedy

Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein

When you strip away the humour, the action and the madcap characters, Ryan Reynolds’ decade-long pet project is a standard revenge tale. Reynolds plays Wade Wilson, a cocky mercenary who becomes the seemingly invincible — and significantly cockier — Deadpool following an immoral experiment designed to cure his cancer. To make matters worse, Ajax (Ed Skrein, honouring his Britishness through elongated pauses and exaggerated vowels), the man who dished out said experimentation, now has it in for Wilson’s on/off lover, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). What we’ve got then is an unethical Robin Hood whose payback meter is on the brink of breaking point. Quite straightforward really.

Justly, a slow motion opening sequence ushers in the prevailing two-fingered mood. Rather than the names of the actors involved, we’re graced with the generic roles they will be playing: “A gratuitous cameo, a British villain, a hot chick.” Such blanket roles form part of an assault on the genre, supported by profanity-laden wisecracks. That’s all Deadpool is really, one giant gag. The jokes are self-referential to no end, and many of them aren’t even jokes — invoking names like McAvoy and Stewart, for instance, doesn’t take that much effort. A Detroit quip suggests smarter thoughts are at play, but they seem drowned out by an unflappable need to guffaw at anything genital-related.

Yet on the visual side of things, the film exceeds its own humorous expectations. Laughter might be hard to come by verbally, but visually director Tim Miller has crafted a goldmine: from an early shot of Deadpool popping his head out of the window of an overturned vehicle to arguably the movie’s funniest moment, a joke based around a mask. The latter works because Miller and cinematographer Ken Seng are careful in its construction, opting to tease us by positioning their camera at a certain angle. Another effective shot sees Wilson journey to his torture destination aboard a stretcher, creepily reimagining a similar scene in Jacob’s Ladder.

Perhaps the greatest flaw in Deadpool isn’t anything to do with the film itself, but its retrospectively overcooked marketing campaign. If you consider not just the punchlines but also the build up to those punchlines, there are probably around 30 or 40 minutes of Deadpool that anyone who has seen the trailers (which is everyone) will be familiar with. This means the jokes land with less oomph in the cinema, if any oomph at all — you could argue the best jokes are those that generate a laugh irrespective of how they are heard, which isn’t the case here. Here, repetition sucks the life out of would-be key moments, such as the opening vehicular mayhem or the standoff between Deadpool’s crew and Ajax’s gang.

By railing against the typical genre trappings, you would expect the film to at least offer something different upon nearing its conclusion. There is a joke about International Women’s Day that takes issue with uneven gender roles — a problem not completely eradicated on the superhero movie front — after which I found myself anticipating Deadpool’s response, for the film to maybe lead the way in making a statement. But it never does. Of the three main females on-screen, one is a wordless brute (Gina Carano), another is a moody teenager (Brianna Hildebrand), and the third is a prostitute (Morena Baccarin). And they remain as such: at no point do we see any of them deviate from their characters’ genericisms.

That was quite a lot of negativity, but Deadpool is undoubtedly an enjoyable twist on the genre and a piece that boasts its fair share of genuinely entertaining moments. The action is vigorous, any pulling of punches outlawed. It is a fairly brutal adaptation that certainly earns its stateside R rating; as violence goes, this has more in common with Marvel’s Daredevil than anything from the studio’s recent cinematic portfolio. A word too for an inventive closing credits sequence that implores you stick around, which is just as well given the post-credits scene is also cracking, an homage to one of cinema’s very best anti-authority comedy outings.

The movie wouldn’t be half as good without Ryan Reynolds, who looks and sounds like he is having a blast in spandex, his condescending voice a perfect match for the provocatively annoying character. The actor’s kid-in-a-candy-shop exuberance pollutes the air and spreads throughout the audience. It is a testament to Reynolds’ physical abilities that he manages to evoke Deadpool’s unique personality despite spending most of the flick beneath a mask. Mutant Wilson, by the way, looks like a terrifying cross between Freddy Kruger and the monstrous figure from Sunshine, so the mask is definitely a good call.

I’ll be the first to hold my hands up: in a packed screening room, my mellower reactions were consistently drowned out by uproarious laughter. This is a film that many have anticipated for a long time and it appears to have pleased the vast majority. There is clearly a desire to reflect the source material, which is admirable if a tad foolhardy. Maybe it’s the rebellious streak, or perhaps the cathartic undoing of distinctly poorer previous superhero incarnations (see X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Green Lantern). Thanks to Ryan Reynolds, at least Deadpool offers something a bit different.

Images credit: IMP Awards, Collider

Images copyright (©): 20th Century Fox

Director: Paul Feig

Release Date: June 5th, 2015 (UK & US)

Genre: Action; Comedy; Crime

Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne, Jude Law, Jason Statham

When James Bond saunters into town, his pristine Armani suit hiding any number of high tech weapons, hair nestled to the last strand, there often isn’t an awful lot of room for laughter. To solve: swap Bond for Melissa McCarthy and his Armani suit for her grey cardigan. Paul Feig’s Spy is many things, but first and foremost the writer-director has made a film that ridicules other films through sharp satire and vulgarity. It is ridicule born out of admiration, though mercy is somewhat lacking.

Susan (Melissa McCarthy) works for the CIA as Agent Bradley Fine’s (Jude Law) office-based earpiece. She is self-depreciating and lacking in confidence, which makes it easy for those who she obsequiously admires to take advantage of her skills. When Fine runs into trouble while trying to locate a nuclear device, Susan ditches her hesitant psyche and volunteers to observe potential bomb supervisor Rayna Boyanov (Rose Byrne) in the field.

Feig romanticises the spy genre before sticking a bullet in it. The contractual car chase sequence (there are two actually) matches slick low camera angles with precise steering, but is ultimately a nightmare for Susan who desperately needs a seatbelt. Later on a spot appears to be free at Boyanov’s poker table — of course the baddie plays poker — but Susan’s efforts to join are scuppered when she finds out the spot is reserved. The humour is fairly light-hearted, particularly during the first hour as the underlying stupidity of the genre unravels before our eyes.

Topical jokes about Jurassic Park bats eventually secede from the ongoing shenanigans, ironically at around the same time tough guy Agent Rick Ford starts rearing his hilariously bloated head. The influence of Jason Statham pours into the screenplay and the film thereafter becomes a hotbed of amusing profanity. Statham does a tremendous heightened impersonation of himself and steals the show in the process: eyes constantly bulging, words packed with punch.

He instigates a lot of “fucks” too — an additional thirty minutes and Spy might have given The Wolf of Wall Street a run for its sweary money. Solitary f-bombs increase in quantity as the film progresses, universally well-delivered but not as gratifying as Statham’s completely baseless, hyperbolic remarks (he claims to have survived a car crash on top of a moving train while on fire, or something). Ford is a reflection of the nutty stunts and brash egos prevalent throughout the Bond franchise, but he’s only one branch on the film’s satirical tree.

We travel with Susan to numerous glamorous cities, visiting Paris and Rome and Budapest, Robert Yeoman’s cinematography consistently painting each locale with a prosperous gloss. If this wasn’t so obviously a spy outing you’d be forgiven for confusing the whole thing with a holiday brochure. Early on, some cotton wool-wrapped admin staff marvel at all the incredible gadgets: hoverboards, Aston Martins, palm-sensitive weaponry. None of that for Susan though. She receives some security disabling aerosol disguised as anti-fungal spray.

Spy incorporates a large volume of female characters whose attributes range from quiet, to funny, to powerful, to supremely effective in combat. Rose Byrne hams it up with delectable aplomb as Boyanov. She’s a nefarious villain, indisputably, but she is also smart and sexy. Allison Janney snaps away as Susan’s boss, always ahead of the curve. Even as the goofy best friend, Miranda Hart gets in on the action. Susan is the antithesis of convention personified. She’s all of the above, but also kind and proficient when it comes to terminating bad eggs. McCarthy retains her Bridesmaids crassness and is such an affable screen presence.

The men don’t fair quite so well. They are smutty, degrading, idiotic and full of ridiculous non-truths. Good spies are actually bad spies, they’re apparently just good at being dicks. “I like things that are easy,” says Fine, referring both to the control he has over Susan and her penchant for making his job exceedingly less difficult. Peter Serafinowicz turns up the creep factor as chauffeur Aldo, essentially a reimagining of Bond with his sleaziest characteristics intensified.

At one point Janney’s character tuts, “Women,” and it feels like a nod towards the unfortunate consequences of institutional misogyny found within classically male-dominated workplaces — especially Hollywood, and spy films, where women have often been (and sometimes still are) defined as plot points rather than well-rounded characters. This time some of the men are purposefully shallow. They do have redeeming qualities — Fine isn’t really a rubbish person, he’s simply indicative of a groan-inducing fake macho culture — but here the gender roles are well and truly (and refreshingly) reversed.

The violence is comical, reminiscent of those splattery outbursts in Hot Fuzz. A tremendous kitchen fight scene spiritually resembles the supermarket brawl in Edgar Wright’s movie, with baguettes, lettuce and hand-piercing knives all used in an inventive manner. Not every gag hits the mark, especially ones driven by aimlessness rather than intelligent wit; Susan invades an outdoor techno entertainment event and chases around a slightly chubby Elton John-lookalike, with the whole endeavour feeling a bit lazy. That’s not the norm though. The film has a lot in common with the underrated Johnny English when it comes to silly comedy.

The plot gets increasingly convoluted as more deals are struck and more bosses are revealed, but that is sort of the point. It’s part of the overarching joke. You’ll see Spy for the humour, which is adept and plentiful. But the film also has its finger on the cultural pulse, ready to pull the trigger on irreverent gender roles and uneven social standards via a barrage of well-earned laughs.

Images credit: IMP Awards, Collider

Tag: Morena Baccarin

Deadpool (2016)

Spy (2015)