Repugnante

If you are a friend of funny, thrilling and bizarre movies, you're gonna love this one! First of all, this movie manages to surprise you again and again till the end. It switches between funny, dramatic and thrilling elements. James McAvoy gives an amazing performance (by far the best I've seen from him) as the funny, manipulative, sick, drug-addicted, broken, Cop and manages to portrait every aspect of the character. Another piece of awesome acting is delivered by Jim Broadbent who plays his psychologist. The dialogues between him and James McAvoy are just amazing! The rest of the cast is also decent and the characters are all very special in a refreshing way. The only bad thing i can mention about this movie is, that it has some (but small) longueurs. I can recommend it to everyone who likes movies of this kind and has no problem with movies containing a lot of sex, drugs and f*cked up moments :)

I left the cinema speechless; i normally try to critique and discuss the film straight after, but i was speechless. It was the craziest film i have seen in a long time. It takes boundaries and tells them to f*** off. There are no restrictions with this film. There is brutality, sexism, racism, oppression, homophobia. It is polluted with prejudice. But i thought it was a great film. Am i part of those worldly problems? No. But let's face it, this is unfortunately the way the world is and all this film is doing is showing you just how filthy this world can be.

James McAvoy is a revelation as Detective Bruce Robertson; i really didn't see all the fuss with him. Yes he was good in "The Last King of Scotland", but the rest of the films i just couldn't match the hype to the actor, then i went to see "Trance" and i was blown away by his performance. And if it weren't for seeing that i probably wouldn't have been half as eager to see this. Because he showed the ability to portray more than one character in a film; someone who is both fragile and unstable. With "Filth" he excels beyond that and gives his best showing of his young career. He conveys every emotion, from bitterness, to regret, to sadness, to rage, to insanity and he conveys them extremely convincingly. It is a masterclass of acting.

Some may be easily offended, and if you are usually like that, i would avoid seeing the film. But if you want to face the World and its obvious problems head on (in the form of a film) then it is an outstanding film to do so.

Funny and dramatic at the same time. The main character of the film causes double feelings. On the one hand, he is disgusting and pathetic, but on the other hand, he is lonely and seriously ill. Guilt eats away from the inside of the protagonist. This can be seen from the last phrase: "The rules are the same everywhere." Everyone pays for their actions...

Inside the mind of a sex & drug addict policeman. His addictions are so deeply rooted in his personhood that they have entirely taken over his life and are the driving force in everything he does or does not do. Addiction means there's never enough and in his case drugs or sex.

This could have easily been a docudrama, instead it is a crime/comedy with a bit of drama. McAvoy is simply superb as the central mad hero and we undergo with a him a binging trip in corruption and debauchery where everyone in his life become objects he comes to use for his own gratification.

Despite the comic element being the one that has the most gravity, we get to see the torment that haunts addicted people and he too is a tormented man and his actions are a smokescreen of his anguish with his refusal to get hep only adding to his misery.

Quirky, fast paced and fun this is one heck of a mind trip.

This is another film adaptation of an Irvine Welsh novel that was referred to as "unfilmable", although when reading the book when it first came out I for one was struck by the tightness of the narrative and the cinema-friendly focus on a single protagonist.

The antihero in question is Bruce Robertson (James McAvoy), a dodgy copper trying to make the most of a promotion opportunity by ruining his rivals through a series of cruel intricate schemes. Meanwhile, his mind is deteriorating, and he's haunted by flashbacks, waking dreams, and humanoid livestock. The film is fairly faithful to the source, and the changes (including some understandably blunted edges) are down to the different artform.

Irvine Welsh has said that McAvoy's performance is better than De Niro's in Taxi Driver. I don't think this is a suitable comparison. Scorsese's seminal feature was about a post-traumatic depression, whereas Jon S. Baird's film is more manic. For me, the film Filth most resembles is A Clockwork Orange. Like Kubrick's masterpiece, the entire aesthetic is informed by the subjectivity of the central character. And there are subtler nods: the use of classical music, the bleached windows, Jim Broadbent's reinvention of the Deltoid character (a probation officer then, a psychiatrist now), and the visual reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Before the film's release, I wasn't convinced by the casting of McAvoy, but after watching it I can safely say he's transformative – to capture such bipolar savagery and the fear in a single facial expression is the sign of a special performance. The supporting cast provides a colourful blend of caricatures. Jamie Bell, Eddie Marsan and Imogen Poots all make an impact in the few moments when McAvoy isn't dominating the screen.

For me, the dud notes concern the tone of the film. Sometimes Baird's shifts between the schizoid black comedy of Robertson's outbursts and his introspective guilt about his past are so sudden and sentimental that their capacity to convince is lost in the (lack of) transition. Part of this is down to Clint Mansell's disappointingly soft score, whose tinkly piano and lifeless strings often feel incongruous, more awkward than deliberate.

But these minor issues don't detract from a powerful, funny, and finally moving depiction of mental disintegration. To say that it's the best Welsh adaptation since Trainspotting may not be saying much – so I'll say instead that it's a very good film in its own right.