The 32 greatest Ryan Reynolds movies
Jul. 15, 2024Only Ryan Reynolds can make being a seventh-year senior look cool
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His is the face of Hollywood stardom: a deadly smile, knowing eyes, and lush hair. Blessed with amazing genes and killer comedic timing, Ryan Reynolds has enjoyed an especially successful movie career for years. With so many movies now under his belt, certainly many of them have to be must-see, right?
Hailing from Vancouver, Ryan Reynolds got his start acting at age 13, but quit a few years later to attend college full-time. At the behest of fellow actor Chris William Martin, Reynolds started acting again and landed a gig on the Canadian teen soap opera Hillside. After cutting his teeth more in guest spots for TV shows like The Odyssey, The X-Files, and The Outer Limits, Reynolds finally landed a starring role in the TV sitcom Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place, in the role of med student Berg. (He was one of the two “Guys.")
But no matter what ventures Reynolds is involved with, he’s still a movie star. In commemoration of his ongoing career, here are 32 of his greatest movies.
32. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
The Wolverine-centric prequel in the hit X-Men franchise is no one’s favorite movie. But if there’s any reason to acknowledge it has a legacy at all, it’s Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson, AKA Deadpool. Up until its release in summer 2009, the Canadian actor was Marvel fandom’s numero uno choice to play the then-obscure anti-hero Deadpool, back when it felt impossible that a Deadpool movie could even happen. With X-Men Origins, Fox granted many fans' wishes only for the monkey’s paw to curl, as Reynolds showed up in an especially bizarre interpretation of Deadpool - that of a mute freak with Baraka arm blades. Years later Reynolds finally played a proper Deadpool, but it wouldn’t have happened if not for X-Men Origins: Wolverine swinging and missing the first time.
You’ll never look at restaurants the same way again. In this grotesque indie comedy from writer/director Rob McKittrick, Justin Long stars as a franchise restaurant waiter languishing in his dead end job. Over the course of one fateful day, Long’s character Dean attempts to secure the more comfy position of assistant manager - if only the customers made it easy. Ryan Reynolds co-stars as Dean’s best friend Monty, who has an alarming attraction to underage hostess Natasha (Vanessa Lengies). Waiting… is not an easy movie to watch, and certainly ruins the fun of going out to eat. But if you can stomach it, you might be left craving for more.
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Buying the Cow, a mighty obscure and mighty offensive comedy from Walt Becker, is all about the highs and lows of modern love. Jerry O’Connell plays a man stricken with fear over committing to his girlfriend (Bridgette Wilson); Ryan Reynolds co-stars as his womanizing best friend who wakes up from a one night stand to find out he’s slept with a dude. Buying the Cow doesn’t stand the test of time and for good reason. It’s blatantly homophobic and a bit misogynistic while trying to come off enlightened. But go in with the right mindset and you’ll still have a few good laughs. If nothing else, it has quite the prescient joke in which a buck-naked Ryan Reynolds climbs down a building and is mistaken by a child as “Spider-Man.”
It’s basically Freaky Friday for dudes, and it’s both as good and bad as that sounds. In The Change-Up from director David Dobkin, Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman play two best friends who lead very different lives - one being a married family man (Bateman) and the other a single womanizer (Reynolds) - who switch bodies after peeing in a magical fountain. The Change-Up is terribly unambitious and goes down exactly what you expect, but you can’t deny that Reynolds and Bateman know how to give audiences a good time at the movies.
Throwing it back to the buddy action blockbusters of yesteryear, Ryan Reynolds and Dwayne Johnson team up in this breezy caper involving international exotic locales and prized ancient Egyptian eggs. In the wildly expensive Netflix original movie from director Rawson Marshall Thurber, Johnson plays a beefy, straight-laced Interpol agent who reluctantly teams up with a notorious art thief (Reynolds) in order to catch a beautiful, even more elusive criminal (Gal Gadot). The plot is nonsense and both Johnson and Reynolds appear to be on autopilot, but Red Notice is ultimately harmless fun. That it’s just streaming on Netflix feels like a steal.
After working with director David Leitch on Deadpool 2, Ryan Reynolds made an uncredited but lengthy cameo for Leitch’s Fast & Furious spin-off Hobbs & Shaw. While the movie is laser-focused on both Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham flexing their biceps and making mean faces, Reynolds - and comic actor Rob Delaney - briefly steal the movie as agents tasked with getting both Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw on the same page again. Stay tuned after the credits for a bonus scene that suggests Reynolds’ character is a lot scarier than he appears.
In this explosive Netflix blockbuster from popular action director Michael Bay, Ryan Reynolds stars as a billionaire who fakes his own death and assembles a team of hot-shot specialists to take down a ruthless dictator. Big, noisy, and terribly unsubtle, 6 Underground is exactly what you expect from a wildly expensive tentpole production made exclusively for a major streaming service. Although Ryan Reynolds has starred in better movies, it’s hard to resist a Reynolds/Bay collaboration - a winning recipe had it been released in an earlier era of Hollywood.
There’s no question Ryan Reynolds is a handsome movie star. Roger Kumble’s 2000s rom-com Just Friends is well aware of its leading man’s appeal, which is why it’s a hoot to see it torture him for being a try-hard. Just Friends features Reynolds as Chris Brander, who as a teenager was an overweight goofball helplessly in love with his best friend Jamie Palamino (Amy Smart). 10 years after he was laughed out of his New Jersey hometown, Chris is now a studly, womanizing L.A. record producer. Returning home for Christmas, Chris tries to reconnect with Jamie, only to fall backwards into being the clumsy kid he used to be. Just Friends is crass and crude with an outdated sense of humor, but it’s still charming in its own way. Not to mention: Anna Farris is a laugh-riot in the role of a spoiled, sexed-up pop star.
Should you live life fully planned out? Or should it be lived spontaneously? That’s the premise behind Chaos Theory, a cute dramedy starring Ryan Reynolds as a family man named Frank who tries to live in control of every minute. But through a series of mishaps, misunderstandings, and painful revelations, Frank starts to live his life more spontaneously. Chaos Theory meanders a bit in its runaway plot - even culminating in a strange but amusing climax where he tries to shoot his best friend - but Reynolds is still interesting to watch whenever he plays against type. Watching him squirm as a bespectacled control freak is a refreshing change of pace from his usual archetype of “guy on the cover of magazines.”
In this sci-fi thriller from John August, Ryan Reynolds plays three different men in three different stories that are all intertwined in unexpected ways. Each of Reynolds' characters - troubled actor Gary, television writer Gavin, and video game designer Gabriel - grapple with existential questions about the meaning of existence, and if art is a suitable way of harnessing the totality of all our experiences. Unfortunately, The Nines buckles beneath the collapsing weight of its ambitions, becoming unintelligible in its metaphysical meditations towards the end. But The Nines is still an interesting case of seeing Ryan Reynolds in more provocative material.
In this wisecracking action-comedy from Patrick Hughes, Ryan Reynolds plays a protection agent tasked with escorting his longtime enemy, an underworld hitman named Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson), to testify at The Hague against an evil European dictator (Gary Oldman). Naturally, things go awry and the two men must reluctantly work together to make it out alive. The Hitman’s Bodyguard makes excellent use of both Reynolds and Jackson, and comes across like a resplendent throwback to the gritty action movies of the ’80s and ’90s. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it’s still a joyride.
When his demanding she-devil of a boss (Sandra Bullock) faces deportation back to Canada, aspiring book editor Andrew, played by Ryan Reynolds, must agree to marry her. However, over a whirlwind weekend at Andrew’s family’s estate in picturesque Alaska, sparks begin to actually fly, but both are unsure if their feelings are actually the real deal. Although The Proposal is more or less your standard-issue studio rom-comanda touch ghastly with some casual racism, the dynamic chemistry between Bullock and Reynolds make it too easy to say “I do.”
It’s the movie thatwasn’ta surprise Venom prequel. In this science fiction horror in the tradition of movies like Alien, Life, directed by Daniel Espinosa, stars Ryan Reynolds as one of several astronauts aboard the International Space Station who find the first evidence of alien life on Mars. Unfortunately, the sample is rather malevolent, which threatens the crew if not Earth itself. Surrounding Reynolds is a remarkable cast that also includes Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Hiroyuki Sanada, and more. Though Life pales in comparison to the landmark sci-fi horror films it siphons obvious inspiration, it’s still a solid movie and one of Reynolds' best.
It may not hit as hard as a proper Guy Ritchie or Quentin Tarantino movie, but Smokin' Aces is a star-studded affair that lights up the screen like so few others do. From Joe Carnahan, Smokin' Aces centers on the hunt for a Las Vegas magician named Buddy “Aces” Israel (Jeremy Piven) who now works as a mafia informant. When a million-dollar bounty is placed on his head, a vast ensemble of characters seek to kill, protect, or capture Aces. Among them is Ryan Reynolds, who plays an FBI agent assigned to protect Israel and ensure his testimony. Co-starring with Reynolds and Piven are Ben Affleck, Andy Garcia, Chris Pine, Common, Ray Liotta, Tommy Flanagan, Alicia Keys, Taraji P. Henson, Kevin Durand, Jason Bateman, and (we are not joking) so many more. Smokin' Aces may be way too crowded with famous faces, but for anyone looking for a fun, mindless movie, it hits like a bullseye.
In this claustrophobic thriller, Ryan Reynolds plays an American truck driver in Iraq who wakes up buried alive inside a wooden coffin. Armed with only a half-charged cell phone and a cigarette lighter, Reynolds tries to arrange his rescue and make amends in his life only to be met with suspicion. If anyone believes Ryan Reynolds isn’t a good actor, they probably haven’t seen Buried, a pulse-pounding movie that showcases the many depths Reynolds is actually capable of even in confining spaces. Its gut-punch twist ending makes Buried a must-see.
No one will ever say for surewhodid it. But after a pre-vis concept for Deadpool went viral onYouTube, 20th Century Fox had no choice but to go ahead with a proper R-rated Deadpool with Ryan Reynolds in a screen-accurate costume. What happened next changed superhero movies forever. In contrast to the family-friendly Avengers franchise, Deadpool was an R-rated middle finger that had Reynolds shout every cuss under the sun. But the best thing about the movie is that it remains an unlikely love story, in which terminally ill assassin Wade Wilson (Reynolds) embarks on a dangerous procedure to activate his mutant genes to save his life for the sake of his new love Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). In becoming Deadpool, Reynolds upped the ante on superhero blockbusters by showing that yes, superhero movies can be a little naughty.
In another example of Ryan Reynolds playing against his usual handsome guy archetypes, Reynolds stars in the dark comedy-horror The Voices - directed by prolific author and cartoonist Marjane Satrapi - as a schizophrenic factory worker named Jerry who suffers from hallucinations. After going off his meds and killing his crush (Gemma Arteton), Jerry begins to hear life advice from his pet dog and cat, not to mention hearing requests from the woman’s corpse to kill again. The Voices is easily one of Reynolds' strangest and best movies of his career that one wonders why Reynolds doesn’t make more challenging pictures like these more often.
In this Southern-flavored road movie from filmmaking duo Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, Ryan Reynolds and Ben Mendelsohn co-star as gamblers who try to escape debt by betting their way down the Mississippi to enter a high-stakes poker game in New Orleans. While the movie has strong aromas reminiscent of The Color of Money, Mississippi Grind stands firmly on its own thanks to both Reynolds and Mendelsohn rocking the screen and the movie’s black comic story about how forging friendships will always be one of life’s biggest risks. The blues runs deep in the veins of Mississippi Grind, but don’t let it distract you from its hot streak.
With regards to Ryan Reynolds, it isn’t his all-time greatest movie simply because he isn’t its main character. But Adventureland is too good not to consider as a close second. Written and directed by Greg Mottola, Adventureland stars Jesse Eisenberg as a college grad who is forced to spend the first summer of adulthoodnotbackpacking through Europe like he planned, but making minimum wage at the cruddy Adventureland theme park instead. But summertime romance blooms when he meets fellow employee Em (Kirsten Stewart). Ryan Reynolds plays a supporting role as the devil-may-care repair guy and musician who seems to be very friendly with Em. A tribute to those halcyon summers we wished would never end, Adventureland is simply magnificent, and Reynolds only makes it better with a measured performance.
Fresh from his sitcom TV stardom, Ryan Reynolds took on the role of his career with the endlessly quotable and occasionally insightful (and definitely gross) National Lampoon’s Van Wilder. Inspired by a Rolling Stone article profiling comedian Bert Kreischer, Van Wilder tells of a seventh-year college senior (Ryan Reynolds) whose rich father has wised up to his son’s intentions to never graduate. Forced to embark on his last year, Van Wilder uses his wits and reputation to pay for tuition and finally leave school behind - but not before stealing the heart of a hot journalism student (Tara Reid). Van Wilder put Ryan Reynolds on the map as a true Hollywood leading male, fully exploiting his handsome charm and sharp comic timing to become a kind of new Animal House for a new generation. Write it down.
Eric Francisco is a freelance entertainment journalist and graduate of Rutgers University. If a movie or TV show has superheroes, spaceships, kung fu, or John Cena, he’s your guy to make sense of it. A former senior writer at Inverse, his byline has also appeared at Vulture, The Daily Beast, Observer, and The Mary Sue. You can find him screaming at Devils hockey games or dodging enemy fire in Call of Duty: Warzone.
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