The story begins in the middle of the action, with Deadpool causing all manner of mayhem on a crowded Los Angeles freeway while trying to kill Ajax (Ed Skrein), a nasty British villain against whom he has a personal grudge. After a great deal of slow-motion carnage that establishes (1) Deadpool’s uniquely sarcastic, profane nature and general amorality and (2) his super abilities, which include superhuman speed and perception and the ability to heal quickly from almost any wound, the film rewinds to show us how he got there via his sexually charged relationship with Vanessa Carlysle (Morena Baccarin), the love of his life who is just as twisted and depraved as he is, and his bout with terminal cancer. It was the cancer that put him in the hands of Ajax, who promised a cure but ended up horribly scarring him both physically and psychologically. A Special Forces vet who had been earning a living as a mercenary, Wade Wilson (as he is known when not in red spandex) was already a dangerous man, and losing both the love of his life and his handsome face turns out to be too much. Much revenge ensues.

The character of Deadpool was originally introduced in the Marvel comic book universe back in the early 1990s, and since then he has taken on numerous iterations in numerous titles, even appearing on screen played by Ryan Reynolds in a different form in X-Man Origins: Wolverine (2009). The concept behind the character has always been about undercutting the general seriousness of the superhero business, not only by highlighting Deadpool’s fundamentally antiheroic nature, but also by undercutting the very form in which heroism is celebrated by allowing him to break the fourth wall and speak directly to the audience (which he does numerous times throughout the film). Of course, the movie has plenty of bucks to back up its bangs (you can even watch it in IMAX!), although there are amusing conceits to its more reasonable budget, such as when Deadpool ruminates out loud about whether limited studio economics explain why the only two X-Men characters we ever seen in the enormous Xavier School for the Gifted are the two X-Men who have roles in the film.

Visual effects producer-turned-first-time director Tim Miller and writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick clearly had a grand time cutting loose, and the smartest thing they do is essentially turn the film over to Reynolds, whose well-established screen charisma made his casting here an inevitability. If Green Lantern didn’t work because Reynolds was too much character for the film to bear, then Deadpool is the perfect vehicle for his unique brand of charming snark because he couldn’t possibly do too much in a film that is designed to be over the top in every way. Reynolds gives a revved up, caffeinated performance as he rips into the rarefied world of superheroes with reckless abandon, and for the most part it works quite wonderfully. Wise cracks and one-liners have long been a release valve for the violence of action/adventure movies, but in Deadpool they are the film’s very backbone. Not a minute goes by without a zinger, a clever insult, or a tossed-off pop culture reference (Reynolds even gets to take a shot at his own acting ability to one point). Lest we forget, there are some other characters in the film, including two X-Men with whom Deadpool must team up (Stefan Kapicic’s Colossus and Brianna Hildebrand’s Negasonic Teenage Warhead), a deadpan-sarcastic bartender named Weasel (T.J. Miller), an oddly gracious Indian cab driver (Karan Soni), and Ajax’s nefarious righthand woman Angel Dust (Gina Carano). But, let’s be real: Deadpool is pretty much the whole sword-slinging, gun-charging, wise-cracking show. If you enjoy what he has to offer, the movie works. If you find him repellant, you’d best go to another theater.

However much the raunchy humor and postmodern genre disemboweling works, what I appreciated most about Deadpool is that the stakes were decidedly personal—intimate, even. I have become increasingly deadened to the blockbuster mentality that demands a climactic showdown in which nothing less than the world itself is at stake and mass destruction must ensue for it to be saved. We’ve seen it so many times in so many different movies—and not just of the superhero variety, although they are certainly the worst offenders—that watching a single man with a couple of friends take on an anonymous army of bad guys not for some galactic good, but to save the woman he loves, feels incredibly refreshing and, more importantly, emotionally engaging. While I don’t like to think I would identify with someone like Deadpool in many ways, I can recognize the need to protect his loved ones, and the film’s protracted climactic bloodbath is, ironically enough for a movie so stridently vulgar and sarcastic, all in the name of love. Cue Wham!’s “Careless Whisper.”

Copyright ©2016 James Kendrick

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