Deadpool

A superhero film that mocks its own genre. Wade is a former soldier taking private jobs. He hangs around a bar, meets a woman, and it goes well. Then he is diagnosed with cancer. A man offers him an experimental treatment and he takes it. The treatment works but there is a price. He cannot die, and his face and skin are destroyed. From there the film is a revenge search. He wants the man who did it to him, and talks to the camera constantly while looking. The narrative is not linear. It opens with an attack on a motorway, goes back, and the narrator announces that he is doing so. What the narrative is interested in is not heroism but the joke: the film mocks its own budget, its own studio and its lead actor's earlier films. Underneath that is an ordinary story, and the film does not hide it; the plot under the crude humour is entirely conventional. The production went unapproved for years. A test reel leaked online long afterwards, the reaction was large, and only then did the studio start the film. The budget was kept low by the standards of the genre. The visible result is the small cast, which the film also makes jokes about. It was rated for adults, which was not the usual decision for a superhero film at that scale at the time. Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein, T. J. Miller and Gina Carano are in the cast. Tim Miller directed; it was his first feature. Who it is for: anyone who likes crude humour and genre parody. Who it is not for: anyone watching with children; the language and violence are deliberately hard.