Deadpool (2016)

"Deadpool"

⭐⭐

The first few scenes of “Deadpool”—the sometimes funny but often flat, queasy and profoundly cynical new Marvel comics movie—feature the sarcastic, masked vigilante of the title, dispatching a bumbling coterie of enemies using a semi-automatic pistol, a barrage of vulgar one-liners, and enough narcissistic mincing and mugging to suggest the sadistic gang from “A Clockwork Orange.” For anybody who’s ever wondered what would happen if you crossed Ace Ventura with the X-Men and added an R-rating, here’s your answer.

The character was actually introduced in the 2009 film, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” when he was still a human named Wade Wilson, special operations agent turned mutant sidekick of Hugh Jackman and company.

In the new movie, Wilson’s life is upended by a terminal cancer diagnosis, leading to a break up with his gal pal (Morena Baccarin), and a murky meeting with the villainous Ajax (Ed Skrein), a demented goon who promises a cure and delivers pain and torture—injecting Wilson with blueish goo that gives him invincible powers but leaves him looking less like Ryan Reynolds and more like something lurking in the shadows underneath Parisian opera houses.

After an exceedingly gory confrontation with Ajax, Wilson starts preparing for the inevitable third act, donning the whole Deadpool get-up and knocking off the former’s minions one by one. Meanwhile, a pair of X-Men—a walking skyscraper named Colossus (Stefan Kapicic) and a surly teenager (Brianna Hildrebrand)—show up now and then when Deadpool needs fresh fodder for his incessant witticisms.

The comedy in “Deadpool” consists largely of random derisive banter, winking references to other movies, and juvenille scatological asides, much of it delivered by the main character either directly, in voice-over narration, or face-to-face with the audience. Some bits score a laugh but most land with a thud, and the direct-address gimmick wears thin.

Tim Miller, a visual effects artist making his debut as a director, pumps up the action with slow-mo acrobatics and bloody close-ups. “There’s the money shot, baby,” Deadpool quips delightedly as a bullet shreds an adversary at a grisly 300-ish frames a second. The screenplay, by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, essentially turns Deadpool into the insult comic of comic book heroes, making him more of a stand-up routine than a fully fleshed out character.

“I had another Liam Neeson nightmare,” Deadpool says, in a reference to the actor’s “Taken” series. Ironically, it’s during scenes when the burned hero stalks the streets looking to capture glimpses of his girlfriend and his former life that “Deadpool” evokes one of Neeson’s other, more obscure movies—the brilliant and underrated comic book style adventure “Darkman” from 1990.

That film also featured a revenge-minded protagonist who uses his wits to ferret out the criminal element responsible for leaving his countenance mutilated and his life in ruins. But what made “Darkman” more emotionally resonant and enduring lies both in the humanity of the hero’s suffering and the edgy, noirish world director Sam Raimi brought vividly to life with expressive camera angles and movements.

“Darkman” was a real movie; “Deadpool” is just an evening at the improv.