A controversial
Crime Comedy Drama starring James McAvoy,
‘Filth’ is based on Irvine Welsh’s 1998 novel of the same
name. Directed and written by John S.
Baird, this flick earned £250,000 in box
office revenue during its opening weekend in Scotland, reaching number one in
the film chart. It follows the breakdown of DS/Acting
DI/PC Bruce Robertson (McAvoy)
- a manipulative, violent, bi-polar, depressive drug user in Edinburgh.
He
delights in bullying his co-workers, harassing women and sleeping with his
friends’ wives. But his professional goal lies in gaining a promotion to
Detective Inspector, the path to which appears to open when he is assigned to
oversee the investigation into the murder of a Japanese student but slowly
loses his grip on reality and suffers from a series of severe and haunting
hallucinations.
As
much as this film is bursting at the seams with laugh-out-loud moments, parts
that you can only watch from behind your hands and edge of your seat scenes,
protagonist Bruce’s problems are
rooted in something far more emotionally darker than you might expect. It’s 97 minutes
of jaw-dropping, stomach-churning, hilarious madness that keeps you on your
toes from start to finish.
Bruce Robertson’s moral compass is so off-centre it’s no wonder he’s unrelentlessly
obsessed with what he labels ‘the games’- namely, his job. ‘Filth’ is full of sadness,
sex and unimaginable self-loathing and is not for the faint hearted. It also
deals with shadier issues such as self-disgust cynicism
and crypto-gayness. It’s for fans of films such
as ‘Trainspotting’ which may be
because the novel of the same title was written by the same author as ‘Filth’, Irvine Welsh, whose speciality is gritty Scottish plots are
commonly ridden with drugs, danger and dark humour. So unsurprisingly, protagonist
Bruce Robertson isn’t the first in
line for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The
film’s soundtrack is full of variety, from ironically used classical pieces, to
covers of Alternative classics such as Radiohead’s
‘Creep’ and it’s formed of some unsettling rapid editing, rapid scene
changes, kinetic camera work, fantasy sequences and an almost hyperactive aura.
McAvoy’s performance is astonishing
given his previous roles in ‘Atonement, (2007),
‘Penelope’ (2006) and ‘X Men: First
Class’ (2011) and his pure talent and range of work as an actor is awesome to
experience.
Jon S. Baird never lets the film’s realistic insanity become tedious; even when sentimentality creeps in to play, you know you’re only a minute or two away from someone yelling some sadistic abuse at another character, whether it’s from ‘Billy Elliot’ (2000) star Jamie Bell or Jim Broadbent. Considering the spectacularly shady source material, particularly due to its Christmas time setting, ‘Filth’ is incredibly well adapted and remains brilliantly twisted in all the right places. All the non-PC gags are presented in the most appropriate way for the film, so they simply come across as comical rather than offensive and excessive.
McAvoy’s satanic yet stunning performance
is definitely a force to be reckoned with and the movie goes deeper than simply
dealing with some cop’s physiological and drug driven problems. It also takes
in comic corners, twists into darker spots and becomes bleaker and more
mysterious as the seconds tick by. A wonderfully warped, wild ride, this really
is in-your-face cinema- ‘Filth’ does
exactly what it says on the tin!
4.5/5
Watch the official trailer for ‘Filth’ can be viewed here:
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