Filth: review and trailer
THAT nice James McAvoy plays nasty in Filth and successfully buries all notion of him as a boyish, blue-eyed sweetie.
In this crazed adaptation of Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh’s 1998 novel he plays a depraved Edinburgh police officer, Detective Bruce Robertson, who is gradually going nuts under the weight of his addictions and psychological problems.
Desperate for promotion at work he smears and manipulates his rivals while sleeping with their partners, demanding sexual favours from suspects and consuming industrial quantities of drugs and alcohol.
Only straight-laced colleague Amanda Drummond (Imogen Poots) has the wiles to realize he might be a little unbalanced but can she intercede before Bruce goes well and truly off the deep end?
Robertson is such an outlandish figure that the film oozes shock and wicked black comedy
Despite a top-notch supporting cast, including Jim Broadbent as the hallucinating Robertson’s fantasy psychiatrist and an underused Jamie Bell, this is a one man show.
McAvoy gives a full throttle performance and even finds a certain pathos in his monstrous character’s twisted yearnings.
However, Robertson’s not quite compelling or charismatic enough to carry the movie which is more cartoonish character study with too many digressions and fantasy sequences than exciting, believable story.
(18, 97mins)
Director: Jon S. Baird
Stars: James McAvoy, Imogen Poots, Jim Broadbent, Jamie Bell
Verdict: 3/5
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