RETURN OF THE SMART-ASS HERO

Deadpool 2 is, if less of a surprise than its predecessor, just as funny; if it’s less sexy, that doesn’t mean you’re not going to get to see the protagonist walking around with no pants.

As we start, Ryan Reynolds’s Wade Wilson/Deadpool is roughly where you’d expect him to be two years after the first movie. He’s using his new powers to slice and dice much bigger opponents, taking out whole gangs of bad guys at a time.

Wade still lives in erotic bliss with girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin); they’ve just started talking about having kids. Before long, a shocking attack has brought Deadpool so low that he’s ready to follow Logan into the Marvel-hero hereafter. Soon, Wade is being cared for at Professor Xavier’s estate, and being none too careful with the furnishings. Colossus wants to cure Deadpool of killing people and make him an X-Man. But on their first official-ish outing, Deadpool gets into trouble trying to rescue an

emotionally disturbed young mutant, Russell (Julian Dennison), who calls himself Fire-fist for reasons that will be self-evident. Wade is soon going it alone, trying to rescue Russell from a timetravelling cyborg soldier played by Josh Brolin. This Terminatortough character is called Cable.

Cable has brought some nighunbeatable weaponry along from his dystopian future, and Wade realises he’ll need help. He recruits a slew of new super powered oddballs for a crew he dubs X-Force.

Most exciting of these newcomers is Domino ( Atlanta’s Zazie Beetz), whose mutant power is that she’s lucky.

There’s action aplenty throughout the film, but Deadpool 2 doesn’t bog down in it as many comic-book sequels do. Whenever it threatens briefly to slip into corniness, though, the movie regains its balance. If sequels built on the backs of X-whatever mutants are going to thrive into the future, this instalment needs to convince its loner protagonist