Mark Lyn­der­say

Widescreen cin­e­ma has al­ways had a prob­lem with the con­cept of the an­ti-hero, re­gard­less of its source.Tru­ly amoral char­ac­ters in pop­u­lar fic­tion spring hith­er­to pre­vi­ous­ly un­seen hearts of gold when they are in­car­nat­ed in the movies, their com­pli­cat­ed mo­ti­va­tions trun­cat­ed and shoved in­to the "re­deemed sin­ner" plot trope that's worked so well and so sat­is­fy­ing­ly for large au­di­ences as well as ner­vous stu­dios.

It's no sur­prise then that the well-oiled en­gine of pop­u­lar moviemak­ing is equal­ly numb to the far less nu­anced char­ac­ters it has adapt­ed from the comics, grind­ing sim­ple and straight­for­ward ideas about un­healthy mo­ti­va­tion in­to more palat­able fare.And there is, sur­pris­ing­ly, no short­age of such he­roes in the four-colour world of comics.

DC's par­ent com­pa­ny, Warn­er, had no idea what to do with Jon­ah Hex, a bru­tal­ly scarred, ut­ter­ly nox­ious boun­ty hunter who nev­er­the­less car­ried one of the com­pa­ny's longest run­ning West­ern se­ries and in 2010, turned his sto­ry in­to a lame su­per­nat­ur­al mys­tery. DC has bare­ly touched its Dead­pool equiv­a­lent, Lobo, in oth­er me­dia.

Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry Fox, per­haps buoyed by the suc­cess of Mar­vel's Guardians of the Galaxy, which mixed wise­crack­ing hu­mour with cos­mic back­grounds to sig­nif­i­cant suc­cess, got fear­less with its new film ver­sion of Dead­pool.This isn't the first time Dead­pool has ap­peared on­screen in a Mar­vel movie.

The char­ac­ter ap­peared briefly in the poor­ly re­ceived X-Men Ori­gins: Wolver­ine, a film which seemed to large­ly hang on the pres­ence of a small bliz­zard of in­con­se­quen­tial mu­tants and Hugh Jack­man's bare chest.

It's per­haps an in­di­ca­tor of just how se­ri­ous Ryan Reynolds was about play­ing Wade Wil­son (Dead­pool) that he took that small, atro­cious­ly mis­han­dled part in 2009, and then sol­diered on for years jock­ey­ing to get the film made.And now Dead­pool is here. And you can't take your chil­dren to see it.

That didn't stop many from show­ing up over the week­end at Movi­eTowne try­ing to get in and oth­ers, ac­com­pa­nied by what one ex­pects are re­spon­si­ble adults, from ac­tu­al­ly join­ing an in­cred­i­bly long line to see the film, which seemed to be sell­ing out at show­ing af­ter show­ing.

Your own mileage may vary, de­pend­ing on how com­fort­able you are with your child's fa­mil­iar­i­ty with, hu­man re­pro­duc­tion, tru­ly re­pul­sive body make­up, end­less car­nage, the f-word, the mf word and the mfffffff words.

The film be­gins in mid-ac­tion, as the ti­tles, writ­ten in the dis­mis­sive tone of "the merc with a mouth," thread their wry text through an art­ful­ly frozen sce­nario of ve­hic­u­lar car­nage. Ac­cord­ing to these cred­its, the film stars God's Per­fect Id­iot, Hot Chick and A British Vil­lain, which it ac­tu­al­ly does.

From there, Reynolds takes charge of the film with a stream of sar­casm and pro­fan­i­ty.Dead­pool the film is wild­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble, ag­gres­sive­ly vi­o­lent, com­plete­ly NS­FW, po­lit­i­cal­ly in­cor­rect, adult in con­tent yet puerile in scope while nestling a love sto­ry at its thorny core, ac­com­pa­nied by Wham's Care­less Whis­per, no less.

In the comics, Wil­son talks to him­self con­tin­u­ous­ly, but there is ac­cept­able no equiv­a­lent to the hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry thought bal­loon in cin­e­ma, so Dead­pool talks to the au­di­ence in an al­most con­tin­u­ous and ad­mirably seam­less dove­tail­ing of di­a­logue and mono­logue, of­ten "break­ing the fourth wall" and di­rect­ly ad­dress­ing the cin­e­ma au­di­ence.

This might quick­ly be­come an­noy­ing in an­oth­er film, but Dead­pool the movie is so ut­ter­ly self-aware that it seems like the most nat­ur­al thing in the world.

Reynold's Wade Wil­son is, si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, play­ing a part in a movie, telling the au­di­ence about the part he is play­ing in the movie, of­fer­ing ex­po­si­tion with­out the slight­est hint of nar­ra­tive sleight-of-hand and ac­knowl­edg­ing, with vir­tu­al­ly every frame, that we all know this is a spe­cial-ef­fects dri­ven ac­tion movie, so let's just get on with the good stuff.

It's the first post-dig­i­tal ef­fects film to ac­cept the ab­sur­di­ty of hy­per-re­al vi­su­al im­pos­si­bil­i­ties and not just use the tech­nol­o­gy, it ab­solute­ly rev­els in it.

There are six ma­jor spe­cial ef­fects hous­es cred­it­ed with work­ing on the movie, but the biggest trick the film man­ages to pull off is to ac­knowl­edge it's all fake and con­trived and suck us in­to the mad­cap ride any­way.