Before Deadpool Ryan Reynolds made a masterpiece you can stream for free

Before Ryan Reynolds was a four-quadrant tentpole leading man, the media mogul behind Maximum Effort, the owner of the Wrexham soccer club, and a viral stuntman shill for Mint Mobile (which, to be fair, he owns a 25% stake in), the 49-year-old actor was… well, just an actor. But he hustled as hard. No one over the last 30 years has wanted to be a movie star as bad as Ryan Reynolds.

He parlayed a sitcom stint in Two Guys and Girl and a Pizza Place into a comedy career with Van Wilder. A surprising role as Wesley Snipes’ co-star in Blade: Trinity was supposed to make him an action guy. When that didn’t work out, he tried horror (The Amityville Horror), R-rated thriller (Smoking’ Aces), indie (The Nines), and rom-com (Definitely, Maybe). Everyone in Hollywood knew Reynolds had that special something, but no writer, director, or producer could quite crack it. Which might explain why Reynolds went back to the superhero well twice after Blade: Trinity, appearing in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Green Lantern. Those were both disasters too.

We all know how this story ends: Passionate about resurrecting the Deadpool character after X-Men Origins cratered, Reynolds went out and self-produced test footage of himself in the full red-spandex regalia to pitch studios on, finally, doing the superhero thing his own way. No one said yes until he leaked that footage and the internet went gangbusters. The rest is history — and not just for the Deadpool’s characters ascent to billion-dollar franchise status. With charm intact, and cultural cache to wield, Reynolds charted a safe movie star lane in parallel to his Merc with a Mouth. Free Guy, Hitman’s Bodyguard, Detective Pikachu, Red Notice, The Adam Project, and IF are just a few of the sugar-coated blockbusters Reynolds used to become a household name that could leverage major businesses outside the world of movies. At least Aviator Gin is good.

Not gonna lie: I was a Ryan Reynolds champion in the days of “try everything.” I had a hell of a time at Waiting…, his overlooked restaurant comedy in which he channels a clear love of crude 1970s comedy that likely also drove him to produce his recent John Candy documentary for Amazon. Reynolds is a legitimately funny guy whose ratatat zinger delivery is on par only with Lin Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop lyricism. He was right to make Deadpool his own, even if the first movie was like an immature TV movie and the most recent mega-hit, Deadpool & Wolverine, was headache-inducing fan-service mania. He has meant well.

Today I would not call myself a ride-or-die for Reynolds — I’m still reeling from Red Notice, somehow both his and The Rock’s nadir — but I hold out hope that there’s a different future for him. Like Tom Cruise, who has spent the better part of two decades chasing the bigger-is-better form of movie stardom only to retreat in the last year to tinier, potentially nastier projects of the Magnolia ilk, Reynolds has great potential for dramatic work, and his last great performance is evidence. Love or hate Deadpool, fanboy or massive hater of the man’s last few years, you need to see Mississippi Grind.

A shaggy, melancholy road movie dressed up like a gambling drama, Mississippi Grind follows two card sharks drifting down the Mississippi River toward New Orleans in search of one last big score. Co-written and directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (Half Nelson, Captain Marvel), the 2015 indie plays like a lost 1970s character study: two men, through whiskey-soaked conversation, manifesting the biggest wins of their lifetimes. Ben Mendelsohn stars as Gerry, a deeply unhappy Iowa real estate agent whose gambling addiction has hollowed out his life, while Reynolds plays Curtis, a charismatic drifter who breezes through poker rooms with effortless charm.

Boden and Fleck channel the energy that makes Reynolds a viable romantic lead or a quick-witted comedic presence into a mythmaker, albeit one who crashes at dirt-cheap motels. Curtis still talks like a Ryan Reynolds character — jokes, stories, and playful swagger — but he’s chasing disaster with a partner in crime who is somehow burnt out than he is. The film initially teases him as a possible con man or bad influence, only to reveal that Curtis may actually be the most emotionally grounded person in the movie. This is a wistful Americana fantasy about losers and the seduction of the “win” that can fix broken people.

Throughout the movie, I felt myself completely disarmed by Reynolds’ performance — playing a burn-out and masquerading as a poker pro is as effortless as when he suits up in the Deadpool mask and spits out profanity. But unlike most of the scripts he signs on for, the world around Mississippi Grind pushes back on Curtis. When he takes Gerry out to the horse races only to find he can’t pull his new buddy away from a double-or-nothing bet, the camera sits on his sorry-ass face where you see the gears turning: I screwed up. Later in the movie, Curtis escapes his downward spiral to meet up with his mom, a lounge singer who clearly has been on a wayward path for even longer than her son. This man is trapped and no amount of Woodford is going to cloud reality enough.

I believe Reynolds could do this all day. Paul Schrader is right there. Josh Safdie is right there. Derek Cianfrance is right there (but his Gambit, Channing Tatum, beat him to the curveball team-up with last year’s fantastic and overlooked Roofman — but Reynolds could do it too!) He’s a great actor stuck appealing to the mass audience. But if you want to see his best performance in over a decade, go watch Mississippi Grind. It’s even streaming for free.

Mississippi Grind is streaming on Netflix and for free on Tubi.