Deadpool may be a Marvel movie but it’s leaner, meaner and a darn sight uncleaner

REVIEW: Marvel superhero movies have become a bit too comfortable for their own good in recent times but Deadpool changes all that within seconds.

DEADPOOL Ryan Reynolds is Marvel Comics’ most unconventional anti-hero, DEADPOOL. Photo Credit: Joe Lederer TM & © 2015 Marvel & Subs.  TM and © 2015 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.  All rights reserved.  Not for sale or duplication.

Deadpool (MA15+)

Director: Tim Miller (feature debut)

Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein, Gina Carno, TJ Miller.

Rating: ***1/2

When looks aren’t everything, you can get away with anything

Marvel superhero movies have become a bit too comfortable — perhaps even play-safe — for their own good in recent times.

So here comes Deadpool to change all that in seconds flat.

“I may be super, but I’m no hero,” declares the title character. He is not lying.

While Deadpool is very much a Marvel movie, at all times it remains leaner, meaner and a darn sight uncleaner than we have come to expect.

Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool relaxes before leaping into battle. Picture: Joe Lederer

And it is funny. Very, very funny. Much mirthful mud is blasted at the screen from close range. Almost all of it sticks.

Particularly if your sense of humour can race at the same rapidfire rate with which star Ryan Reynolds rips through his repertoire of fourth-wall-obliterating gags.

Even the opening credits play the same garrulous game to winning effect. Reynolds’ co-stars are referred to only as “a British villain”, “a CGI character”, “a moody teen” and “a gratuitous cameo.” Behind the camera, Deadpool is “directed by an overpaid tool.”

Lodged between all the boom-boom and bada-bing is a bare-bones origin story, which swiftly relocates Deadpool to his rightful naughty-corner of the Marvel universe.

(Those with long memories might remember he was last seen decapitated and disappearing down the chimney of a nuclear reactor in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine.)

Deadpool is packed full of laughs. Picture: Twentieth Century Fox

Before he was fully suited and masked as a wisecracking waster of bad dudes, Deadpool was once Wade Wilson, a hunky enforcer-for-hire who’d rough up anyone if the price was right.

However, softened by meeting the woman of his dreams (Morena Baccarin), and then devastated by a diagnosis of terminal cancer, Wade made a deal with that aforementioned “British villain” (Ed Skrein) that both saved and ruined his life.

Transformed by botched breakthrough surgery into a hideously disfigured mutant freak, Wade disappears inside an anarchic alter ego he calls Deadpool.

To cut a short story even shorter, Deadpool wants revenge on everyone responsible for the loss of his good looks, and he wants to get back in the good books of his lost love.

Though the action sequences are violent to the extreme — Deadpool’s ability to repair grievous wounds and regenerate entire limbs merely multiply the possibilities to both appal and excite — the mayhem is so cartoonishly choreographed that resistance is impossible.

With so much highly-strung hilarity and irrational energy crammed into every frame, Deadpool makes a major splash by putting its money where its (motor) mouth is, and always paying its way.