Deadpool

Charging over the line that separates good taste from bad is sometimes welcome, especially when it's done by a provocateur with a point of view, but more often than not it results is dopey smut-for-smut's sake like Dirty Grandpa.

No, it's frequently far more interesting and engaging when someone knows where the line is and dances on the edge of it, knowing exactly when or how far to cross over. And that's a dance Deadpool performs with slick, snarky wit, brisk energy and a gleefully dirty-minded sense of fun.

Life was pretty sweet for Deadpool's title character, played by Ryan Reynolds, for a while there — as wisecracking small-time mercenary Wade Wilson, he had a nice living as "a bad guy who gets to fuck up worse guys" and the love of Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), whose sexual adventurousness and ribald sense of humour matched his own.

Then came the terminal cancer diagnosis — which sucked — and the last-ditch grasp at a cure offered by a shadowy cabal — which turned out to suck even more.

These villainous creeps cured Wade's cancer but their efforts to tap into his latent superpowers — in this case, invulnerability and virtual immortality — also resulted in Wade resembling "a testicle with teeth".

So now he's slipping a red mask over his "fugly" face, strapping on his twin swords and going after Ajax (Ed Skrein), the Brit scumbag/scientist who messed him up but may be the only man who can fix him.

The character Deadpool may be a part of the Marvel universe but his first solo film, complete with gushy head-shots, saucy sexual situations and deep-blue humour, is more akin to, say, Kick-Ass than the latest Captain America adventure.

But there's a nifty wiseacre wit to counterbalance the gleeful vulgarity (there's a Judy Blume reference I particularly enjoyed), and the scenes of carnage are staged with punch and panache.

And Reynolds holds it all together, enthusiastically and engagingly playing a character that really plays to his strengths.