Filth

Filth is the story of a Scottish police officer who slips from normality into madness. Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson is out of control when he is sober, but when drugs and alcohol are introduced to an already fragile mind, he loses his grip on reality: totally, completely, fully.Mental illness is the elephant in the room in Western society. This film shows the descent from barely hanging on to outright unhinged. The movie is a statement piece, and perhaps we should heed its warning.The humor (is it Scottish humor? because I am checking my Scottish heritage card here) is repulsive at best: sex, drugs... and dance music. The writer is Scottish, we'll give him a break. If you like Blazing Saddles, then a film like Filth will not phase you.*****FilthScheming Bruce Robertson (James McAvoy), a bigoted and corrupt policeman, is in line for a promotion and will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Enlisted to solve a brutal murder and threatened by the aspirations of his colleagues, including Ray Lennox (Jamie Bell), Bruce sets about ensuring their ruin, right under the nose of unwitting Chief Inspector Toal. As he turns his colleagues against one another by stealing their wives and exposing their secrets, Bruce starts to lose himself in a web of deceit that he can no longer control. His past is slowly catching up with him, and a missing wife, a crippling drug habit and suspicious colleagues start to take their toll on his sanity. The question is: can he keep his grip on reality long enough to disentangle himself from the filth?IMDB quote*****Spoiler Time*****The BreakdownBruce Robertson is a cruel, unapologetic Scottish police officer who treats people as he views the need to treat himself: with disdain, disrespect, and disloyalty. Since childhood, Bruce Robertson has suffered tragedy and guilt. He has bipolar disorder, for which he takes pharmaceutical medication as well as self-medicates with drugs, sex, and alcohol. The audience comes to understand that Bruce is an unfortunate and miserable soul, as he is remorseful over the death of his brother (an accidental death he caused) from childhood, his wife with their daughter has left him for another man, and he dresses up as his wife to feel a connection to his family. He is a man without hope, looking for redemption in a promotion to Detective Inspector.When he is demoted from Detective Sargent to Constable for having his emotional, mental breakdown in full view of his colleagues, he plans his suicide. A knock on the door happens right as he is about to commit suicide. Does Bruce Robertson die at the end by his own hand, or is he saved by the woman he wishes he was good enough for? I think we all know the answer to that question.R.I.P. Bruce.This film has been rated: 7.1/10 Stars on IMDB.*****The Review Bruce Robertson: The games are always, repeat always, being played. But nobody plays the games like me. Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson, soon to be Detective Inspector Bruce Robertson. You just have to be the best, and I usually am. Same rules apply.Although the film is disheveled in places where the pacing of the film is discordant with the plot, the plot itself meanders, its ribald comedic nature and dramatic death spiral, as the audience, we must understand we are seeing the world from Bruce Robertson's point of view. And, Bruce's point of view is unraveling before our eyes. We are descending with him into insanity.Without an anchor of his wife and daughter, Bruce has no reason to remain stable or good or kind. Bruce has no reason to be stable, good, or kind to himself. He is crying out for help, and yet no one can see the desperate state he is in. A police department trained to see the signs of instability in the public is unprofessional and uncaring when the same characteristics present themselves in one of their own officers.The games people play... with other people's mental health.Thank you, James McAvoy, cast and crew, and Irving Welsh for bringing to light the horrible necessity for so many people to shove mental illness under the rug. Yet, hiding mental illness means that the problem goes unresolved. Filth is a tragic-comedy (black comedy) that isn't about depravity, profanity, or obscenity of a rogue police officer. This film is about the indecency of our society that ignores all the warning signs of mental illness and uses its own incompetence to ignore the cries of so many who require mental/emotional help.The tragedy of this film is one of society's failures.*****The TallyMy review will be posted on Prime as well as IMDB.Prime... 4 out of 5 starsIMDB... 9 out of 10 starsThank you, have a great and wonderful day.

James McAvoy, more fun than Keitel, less fun than Cage. This remake of “Bad Lieutenant” adds some Scots accents and lowlifes, but it’s pretty much the same as the last one with Nic Cage. Who was, frankly, way more fun. McAvoy is grungy as all get-out, looks like he reeks, needs a shave and does a lot of snorting, pill-popping and carrying-on with loose women and erotic strangulation. But does he ever enjoy any of this?A fixture of drug movies seems to be that nobody enjoys doing the drugs anyway. So why bother? If drinking yourself blind and snorting powder makes you just increasingly more miserable, maybe, I dunno, find religion or go skydiving? Anyway, James McAvoy has just an awful time to start with, and by the almost end, he’s hallucinating his head off. All Bad Lieutenants do that, though.Keitel, nuns, religious imagery, Catholic guilt. Easy peasey. Cage, reptiles of various descriptions. Pretty funny, especially combined with Cage’s patented hamminess. McAvoy sees pig-monsters and witches, both seemingly from a Christmas pantomime, and they’re not a patch on Nic Cage’s iguanas. They don't even smoke.A bunch of excellent British faces round out the melodrama, best of them being Jim Broadbent, who enlivens just about any picture he’s in. Jamie Bell, Imogen Poots, Eddie Marsan, John Sessions….you could make a good movie with these people and skip the McAvoy part entirely. Do a workplace black comedy.As is, there’s an irrelevant murder, a lot of reasonably enjoyable squalid situations and some pleasant hijinx as McAvoy attempts to sabotage his co-workers’ chances of promotion. And all that breath play. All good fun. But then we, and McAvoy, have to do the downward spiral into mental breakdown. Nic Cage did it funnier. Harvey Keitel did it gut-wrenchingly and unpleasantly. McAvoy did it so we’re glancing at our watches and thinking “get on with it, then”. And then suddenly, a full-on Brian DePalma crossdressing bit that, I admit, does come out of nowhere. Cue the lowlifes! The beat-down! The defenestration!Finally, our man Bruce hits rock bottom, and then there’s a dreadful fifteen minutes of redemption arc that completely abandon the black comedy tone set previously. The director did not know when to say “That’s a wrap, people!” Seriously, the last part belongs in some other movie, because at this point, we do not feel McAvoy’s pain from his childhood trauma, we just think, “We get it, creep, we get it.” Maybe suicide is the answer. A couple of people McAvoy has wronged get improbably righted in clichéd scenes. The auto-asphyxiation (is it still “auto” when you have your partner do it for you?) card is played again. A weird but nicely drawn animated cartoon (a “what th’?” moment tacked on if ever there was) and credits!“Filth” is short, which is good, competently filmed if you like that slice of life grimy, gritty, slimy and gross sort of realism, the accents are not impenetrably thick. It’s just that this story has been told and this retelling doesn’t add much beyond recreational strangulation (wouldn’t it leave hard-to-explain marks?) and the Worst Psychiatrist in Scotland. If you’ve got an hour and a half to fill on the elliptical, it’s not boring, most of the time. And a trip to Hamburg’s less scenic side is always fun. And the sleaze, Moe, the sleaze! You can't have too much sleaze!

Despite some inconsistent tone, FILTH is a darkly comic film about a despicable cop's descent into madness. The story follows Bruce Robertson, a Scottish cop who is up for a promotion, and in charge of a murder investigation. However, those two details are merely springboards for what the movie is really about, that is, his impossibly filthy lifestyle and how he pushes himself to his breaking point. As played by James McAvoy, he is largely unsympathetic although he does have a twisted sense of humor. Other than possibly feeling sorry for him (which is a stretch), the only thing audiences will have to connect with is the promise of being reunited with family, which is what he hopes to achieve with the promotion. However, in the end, even that proves illusory. There is a seriously dark undercurrent to this whole movie, but there is a lot of dark humor to soften what otherwise would be an oppressively dark portrait of a man on the edge. Even still, these are the kind of movies that I love. It's not perfect, due to some jarring attempts at sentimentality, but this is largely a bravura effort with an incredible performance by James McAvoy, and based on a book by the author of TRAINSPOTTING (which tackles similar thematic material). Despite not being for everybody, this is a well-made film that is captivating and deserves to be seen by anybody willing to give it a chance.

An hilariously funny film about Scottish police corruption with a welter of inventive foul language and some good sex scenes (if you like your sex perverted). I sometimes think no matter how much the Scots dislike the English they seem to dislike one another even more.

Complete Rubbish.Juvenile Story Line For Pubescent Boys; Not A Film To Be Taken Seriously.Avoid, Save Your Money.

Love it or hate it....like trainspotting, wickedly dark comedy

When I first saw the trailer I thought this film would be very ironic and creative, similar to Guy Ritchie's Rock'N'Rolla maybe. The first half of the film was promising, very extreme in the way the leading role's character was portrayed and I thought the plot would lead to a climax, followed by falling action and a conlusion, eventually; but there was no contrast, everything was monotone and meaningless. The end came very suddenly and seemed rather flat.After watching the movie I realized it was a waste of time, as the best bits are already shown in the trailer - a quick laugh and that's it - but the movie itself feels very unsatisfying.

This DVD arrived quickly. I was soooo looking forward to this film, as the write ups had been excellent, and as I had missed it at the cinema so decided to order a copy. But it didn't come up to my expectations at all. I had been advised it was very graphic. But it wasn't at all. It was an ok movie that really showed how disfunctional some people are, and who are in high profile jobs....but that is just true life is it not? Some parts were funny, other sad, but not as brilliant as it was made out to be.