Grade: C

Presumably the special effects budget for “Snowden” wasn’t sufficient to allow Oliver Stone to place a halo over the head of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, playing the whistleblower who in 2013 released proof of the US government’s widespread scrutiny of ordinary Americans’ phone records and computer logs, as well as intense surveillance of foreigners, including important officials. Perhaps to make amends for the omission, Stone concludes the picture with some scenes of the real Edward Snowden in the Russian apartment where he now lives as an exile, showing him bathed in sunlight that can only be termed heavenly, even if the expatriate himself is not a religious man.

That isn’t to say that what Snowden did wasn’t extraordinarily important, or that he didn’t exhibit a remarkable degree of courage in putting himself on the line in doing it. But Stone’s treatment has more than a whiff of hagiography to it. It also lacks the sheer cinematic verve that’s marked much of his previous work—sometimes to excess, to be sure, but at least bringing a sense of energy and propulsion to the stories he was telling. In this case he’s working in a more solemn, earnest mode that frankly comes across as tame and pedestrian. At the one extreme there are “JFK” and “Nixon,” frantically impassioned polemics that can careen off course but can’t help but engage; at the other are “World Trade Center” and now this film, which attempt to honor their subjects but end up feeling didactic in a fashion that’s more drab than dramatic.

Stone and his screenwriting collaborator Kieran Fitzgerald employ as a framing device the time that Snowden (Gordon-Levitt) spent in hiding at a Hong Kong hotel with documentarian Laura Poitras (Melissa Leo), reporter Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto) and veteran journalist Ewan MacAskill (Tom Wilkinson), the latter representing the Guardian, the paper that would be instrumental in vetting and printing the reams of material he had taken from the Hawaiian CIA counterintelligence facility where he’d worked as a contract analyst. These events make up the substance of Poitras’ fine documentary “Citizenfour,” and while the recreation is well done, it nonetheless pales by comparison to the real thing.

While the days in Hong Kong proceed, the film slips periodically into flashback mode to dramatize how Snowden got there. These scenes begin with a sequence showing him, frail and undersized but a dedicated patriot in the wake of 9/11, failing to qualify for Ranger service in the US Army, actually suffering a severe injury during basic training. He then applies for the CIA and is accepted into training by his interviewer Corbin O’Brian (Rhys Ifans), who appreciates the recruit’s computer skills despite a lack of even a high school diploma. Once settled in for tests, Snowden shows himself an exceptionally able computer specialist, impressing O’Brian so much that he becomes the young man’s mentor. Snowden also wins the admiration of Hank Forrester (Nicolas Cage), an Agency veteran who’s been relegated to overseeing a roomful of ancient spy machines because he once irritated some higher-ups with a program design.

Simultaneously Snowden meets in the flesh Lindsay Mills (Shailene Woodley), a photographer with whom he’d been communicating on a web dating site. She represents a liberal political perspective very different from his, but they hit it off, and their on-and-off relationship will be one of the story’s constants.

Snowden is assigned to relatively boring desk duty in Geneva, which is alleviated only when he meets Gabriel Sol (Ben Schnetzer), a snarky guy who turns him on to some unauthorized surveillance tools, and a cool CIA agent (Timothy Olyphant, looking ever more like Bill Paxton), who involves him in some actual sting operations. Those experiences sour him on the agency and lead him to resign, although he’ll continue to work with the CIA in various contract capacities—and be mentored by O’Brian—until his conscience convinces him to go rogue and purloin the data he later publicizes, using a Rubik’s cube to sneak the chip containing it past security.

Stone manages a few nice visual touches—like a scene in which O’Brian confronts Snowden via video screen, his image looming over the younger man like a threatening giant. He also puts some genuine excitement into the sequence at the end where Snowden escapes the hotel and gets past a slew of waiting reporters on his way to safety. For the most part, however, his treatment is oddly staid; even the sequence of Snowden getting the cube past guards, which should make for some chills, generates little tension.

Still, the performances are admirable. Gordon-Levitt brings low-key charm to Snowden, as well as considerable nuance. Ifans plays O’Brian—a composite figure—with a suitably icy demeanor, and Woodley manages to add a good deal of shading to a character that, on the page, comes across as bland. Cage, Schnetzer and Olyphant add some welcome color in peripheral roles, and Leo, Quinto and Wilkinson make a classy journalistic trio, though none of the parts is especially demanding. Technically the film is smoothly made—Anthony Dod Mantle’s cinematography is as generically effective as one could want, even if it lacks his distinctive flourishes, and the production design (by Mark Tildesley) and editing (by Alex Marquez and Lee Percy) are fine, if unexceptional.

“Snowden” is a conventional, respectable and slightly dull piece of work, barely recognizable as an Oliver Stone film at all. Perhaps he was wary of comparisons to the florid, eye-popping style that Bill Condon brought to the story of Julian Assange, another high-profile revealer of secrets, in “The Fifth Estate” (2013), which didn’t fare well with either critics or the public. But he might have attempted a happy mean between that degree of excess and the reverential tone he adopts here. Who’d have thought that Stone’s telling of Snowden’s remarkable story would be so unremarkable?

Grade: C

How much credit does a piece of trash deserve for not only admitting that it’s trash but positively reveling in the fact? That’s the question posed by “Deadpool,” the newest entry from the Marvel Comics stable, which opens with snarky credits that omit names but, among other things, identify the lead as “a really hot guy” but the director as “an overpaid tool” and the writers as “the real geniuses,” while promising “a moody teen” and “a gratuitous cameo” (by Stan Lee, of course). It’s a clever bit, as one would expect from the guys who penned “Zombieland,” but one that proclaim so loudly how different it intends to be from the usual run of superhero movies that you begin to wonder whether the makers are protesting too much.

And indeed they are, because the picture is basically a standard origins introduction to what, presumably, will be a lucrative franchise. What distinguishes it from most other Marvel adaptations—all the “Avengers”-related movies, for example—is its attitude, which might be described as Tony Stark run amuck, with a wildly raunchy streak. (The level of violence is heightened too, but not at similarly exponential levels.) The only previous Marvel effort that staked out a “different” label was “Guardians of the Galaxy,” but it moved in the direction of sheer goofiness rather than this picture’s edgy, even nasty vibe.

That derives from the title character, who—as in the comic—is more anti-hero than hero. He’s Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), who’s introduced behind those credits in his costumed form as an endlessly wisecracking red-garbed masked guy whose skill in shooting, beating and eviscerating his foes is helped by his ability to quickly regenerate when wounded. He’s also apt to interrupt the action by addressing the audience directly, breaking down the fourth wall to brag about his own prowess and insult those around him non-stop.

After the opening confrontation, in which he mows down a passel of bad guys in a caravan of SUVs on a bridge but sees his major quarry Ajax (Ed Skrein), the “British villain” promised in the credits, get away, a battered (and temporarily one-handed) Deadpool goes home, a dumpy place he shares with an equally foul-tempered old blind lady (Leslie Uggams). Her disability is fortunate, in a way, because Wade’s face is hopelessly deformed, looking like a melted plastic mask—which is undoubtedly what it is.

That leads to the inevitable back story. Before the face-melting Wilson is a murderous hit-man who headquarters at a dive where he and his equally brutal associates are assigned jobs by a mysterious outfit and his best buddy is the gonzo bartender, Weasel (T. J. Miller). But he finds true love with a hard-bitten hooker named Vanessa (Morena Baccarin)—the “Hot Chick” from the credits—and the two look like they’ll be permanently together until Wade is diagnosed with inoperable cancer.

That revelation understandably changes things, bringing him a visit by a mysterious man who offers him an experimental treatment at a secret facility run by Ajax. The goal of the outfit, however, is not medical but military—and Ajax puts Wade through a series of excruciatingly painful processes designed to turn him into a mindless killing machine that cannot himself be killed. Of course Wilson escapes and adopts the guise of Deadpool to track Ajax down.

Naturally that won’t be easy, especially after Ajax kidnaps Vanessa. To confront him and his army, whose most powerful member is an Amazon named Angel Dust (Gina Carano), Deadpool will need the help of the two X-Men members, metal Hulk-like Colossus (Stefan Kapicic) and that “moody teen,” grim Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), who are anxious to see him go straight and join their team.

There are some elements that obviously distinguish this scenario from ordinary superhero fare—the cancer and Vanessa’s occupation among them. But other protagonists in the Marvel canon have personal quirks, too: Stark is snarky, and Peter Parker cracks wise. Wilson simply combines those two qualities and then squares the result, just as at one point he stops to calculate how many walls the script is breaking. He continuously remarks about the clichés of the genre he’s mocking, especially savoring insults hurled in the way of various X-Men characters, including his “buddy” Wolverine. (Of course there’s also a gag at the expense of Reynolds’ “Green Lantern” fiasco.) He’s also quick with sexual barbs and observations that are calculated to shock. The result is a picture that’s an exercise in following established formula while pretending to subvert it by slyly pointing out its absurdities and adding all sorts of nasty pop culture references and profane asides to the mix.

Ryan, with his smirking, boyish quality, is a natural for Wade/Deadpool, and his verbal dexterity is undeniable. Whether you’ll sympathize with the character, however, will depend on your tolerance of his extreme vigilantism and his “everybody-else-be-damned” attitude. Nobody else in the cast excels. Skrein is as much a standard-issue villain as he was a standard-issue hero in the “Transporter” reboot, while Baccarin is attractive but ultimately just the conventional damsel-in-distress. Uggams provides a few laughs, but it’s Miller, with his slacker-esque observations, that scores most often. The technical side of things is okay, as long as you assume that the cartoonish look of Colossus is an intentional joke, and the action scenes are expertly choreographed, though they aren’t what one would call innovative.

The result is a picture that’s the cinematic equivalent of listening to a couple hours of shock-jock radio. Hard-core fan-boys will eat up “Deadpool,” but others may well find its mixture of snarkiness, vulgarity and mayhem indigestible.

And whatever you do, don’t bring the kids.