After a false start with the character of Wade Wilson in 2009’s uneven yet unjustly maligned X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Ryan Reynolds gets another chance at superhero-albeit unorthodox superhero-stardom. This time he scores big in this twisted film from first time director Tim Miller.

Deadpool establishes its weirdness with scathing opening credits that poke fun at Reynolds’s stint as Green Lantern and all aspects the film’s production. It then becomes a consistently funny tragi-comedy involving Wade, a recently smitten mercenary who comes down with terminal cancer, dimming the lights on his future with girlfriend, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). He submits himself into an experiment that leaves him disfigured yet superhuman, bent on revenge against the criminal who made him this way.

Reynolds finally gets a really good movie to match his charms, and Deadpool gets the nasty film the character beckons for.

The film gets an R-rating for many reasons, and there really was no other way to make a Deadpool film. It needed to be depraved, and it is. T.J. Miller provides nice comic support as a weary bar owner, and a couple of X-Men do show up in a way that is full on hilarious. A sequel is already in the works, and this is a very good thing.