Ryan Reynolds attends the Deadpool & Wolverine premiere at David H. Koch Theater in New York City on July 22.CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/Getty Images
Over the past few years, moviegoers could be forgiven for thinking that Ryan Reynolds only had one acting mode: smarmy and self-satisfied. Just take a look, if you must, at the Vancouver star’s past half-dozen films: IF, Spirited, The Adam Project, Red Notice, Free Guy, The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard. Each was an exercise in the kind of unrelenting smirk that Reynolds has perfected to an annoyingly ingratiating degree, and which is on full display in his latest, Deadpool & Wolverine. But it wasn’t always this way.
Before Reynolds got fully lost in the franchise machine, the actor displayed the kind of quiet range and unforced charm that any leading man would kill for (and which, perhaps ironically, helped punt him into the Hollywood system that has since taken advantage of his default smug mode). With Deadpool & Wolverine likely to only further persuade Reynolds to keep embracing his inherent ain’t-I-a-stinker sensibility, there is no better time to remind everyone of the actor’s very best performances – past promises of the heights that Reynolds is capable of scaling, when he wants to.
5. Deadpool (2016), streaming on Disney+
Yes, we’re starting just where things began to go wrong. But it is hard to understate just how much of the first Deadpool’s massive success is tied to Reynolds’s onscreen presence, which – were it not exacerbated and diluted in sequels – represents a top-tier example of irrepressible cockiness. As the facially scarred, superpowered mercenary Wade Wilson, Reynolds is a firing-on-all-cylinders madman here. And there’s nothing superficial about his turn here. Reynolds is very aware that he might not have such a big-budgeted, superhero-driven shot at movie stardom again – and so he leans into his anti-hero with a ferocious hunger, giving allure and intrigue to a character who, essentially, is the world’s hackiest comedian (albeit one whose weapon of choice is a Glock, not a mic).
4. The Proposal (2009), streaming on Disney+
In a different, perhaps more well-rounded universe, today’s multiplexes would be crowded with winsome romcoms, instead of explosive superhero epics. It’s a little funny, then, that Reynolds would end up serving both genres, even if only one survived the streaming wars. The actor certainly had the romcom chops in Just Friends and Definitely, Maybe – each film an example of the magic that can happen when Reynolds tones down his inner scoundrel and embraces his heartthrob. But it is his role opposite Sandra Bullock in The Proposal that proved Reynolds had the opposites-attract goods. Just like Bullock’s character – who definitely, never, no way was going to fall in love with a guy like the one Reynolds played – audiences knew they had no hopes of guarding themselves against the actor’s charm offensive.
3. 6 Underground (2019), streaming on Netflix
Leave it to chaos agent Michael Bay to make an action movie whose genuine outrageousness puts all of Reynolds’ surface-touch subversiveness to shame – and all while having Reynolds as the lead. In this shamefully underrated Netflix thriller, Reynolds stars as a billionaire tech genius who decided to fake his own death and form a super-team of similarly presumed-dead misfits, out to right the world’s various wrongs. It’s all ridiculous, but it’s the kind of ace-calibre absurdity that Bay handles perfectly, including the intense performance that he coaxes out of Reynolds. His Jeff Bezos-meets-James Bond character is so hard to take seriously that Reynolds wisely flips the likeability switch, creating a tricky hero who gets just as frustrated with himself as the audience might.
2. Mississippi Grind (2015), streaming on Paramount+ and Prime Video
Before they, too, got entranced by the superhero-cinema industrial machine with Captain Marvel, directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck specialized in films about lower-rung characters clinging to life, from Half Nelson and Sugar to this underrated gem. Playing a mysteriously well-to-do drifter who hooks up with a gambling addict played by Ben Mendelsohn, Reynolds is just about perfect here. He is at once enigmatic and transparent, a wannabe hero with no real powers other than the one of persuasion. And his odd-couple chemistry with Mendelsohn – as sweaty and desperate as ever – is wonderfully coy and engaging.
1. Adventureland (2009), streaming on Prime Video
There are two interesting career-pivot narratives hidden inside Greg Mottola’s wonderful dramedy Adventureland, following the young workers of a rundown amusement park in the late 1980s. The first C.V. switcheroo involves Kristen Stewart, whose low-key performance here helped get critics back on the actress’s side after watching her slide into the oblivion of the Twilight series. But Adventureland also marks Reynolds’s best indie work before he would get called up for his own wannabe-franchises, going on to make X-Men: Origins – Wolverine and Green Lantern shortly thereafter. Channelling just the right, sparse amount of his inner frat-boy shtick from his breakout film, 2002′s Van Wilder, to the more gentle, nuanced vision of Mottola (Superbad, The Daytrippers), Reynolds fits in perfectly with the film’s breezy arrested-development environment.