Sujeira

Mister Tumnus, I've a feeling we're not in Narnia any more…

Think you know James McAvoy? Think again. His performance in Jon S. Baird's adaptation of Irving Welsh's Filth is astounding and there is nothing sweet or fluffy about it or any other aspect of the film. Filth is very funny, very wrong, very sordid and very likely to incite hatred from Daily Mail readers across the land. Sex, drugs, more sex, more drugs, violence, corruption, depravity, even more sex and drugs… Filth is absolutely, well, filthy, and is a memorable experience to say the least.

My companion for the screening, Bag, made two comments that stood out post-screening. The first I agree with entirely: "With the thousands of films I've seen over the years, this is the first one I've come out of wishing that I'd made it." The second, that it was a film to appreciate rather than enjoy, I'm going dispute. Call me debauched, immoral and twisted, but I enjoyed every last nanosecond of Filth.

But that's not to say it is always easy viewing. Far from it. Sometime after the midway point the laughs die down, the stomach churns a little more uneasily, the grimaces are more evident and the intakes of breath are more audible. We are less willing to forgive but, like the car crash up ahead that has caused all the drivers in front to rubber-neck, well, just one long look as we pass can't hurt, can it?

Bruce Robertson (McAvoy) is a bigot. He's bi-polar, a junkie, sex-obsessed, self-obsessed, manipulative and frequently thoroughly unpleasant. He's also a cop. With a promotion in the balance, Bruce is up against several colleagues and sets about turning one against the other, unsettling them with salacious gossip and blatant lies to ensure he beats them to the post. Throw in his manipulation of fellow freemason Bladesey (Eddie Marsan), his sultry wife, Carole (Shauna MacDonald) and his hallucinatory sessions with Doctor Rossi (Jim Broadbent) and you have one monumentally screwed up anti-hero. And what's not to love about that?

The Cohen brothers may have the monopoly on fantastic character names, but nobody writes actual characters like Welsh and the cast that Baird has poured into Filth is staggeringly good in their interpretation of this mess of freaks and misfits. There isn't a poor performance in the entire film from the uncertain laddishness of Ray (Jamie Bell) to the fantastic absurdity of Doctor Rossi. While none are bona fide Hollywood stars, the cast that glitters in a maniacal, dirty way is a treat beyond expectation: Imogen Poots, Shirley Henderson, Gary Lewis (yes, Billy Elliott and his dad are reunited at last!), John Sessions, Joanne Froggatt…

Filth is a perfectly paced film; it roars ahead stirring emotions and judgment, exciting and thrilling as it trashes everything in its wake but it is never so fast that we feel left behind or that we've missed out on a juicy morsel of degeneracy. Sufficient time is allowed for us to filter through, as best we can, the quagmire that is Bruce's life, but Baird never pauses or permits us time to glance at our watch or neighbour.

The soundtrack, too, is bang on the money stamping though a musical landscape that is at times acceptably cheesy and more often a reminder of what to check is on the iPod. Where else can you effortlessly segue from David Soul into Shaking' Stevens? While the latter is consigned to audio wallpaper, the bizarrely fantastic cameo from David Soul is a delight. Had Dennis Potter snorted cocaine Pennies From Heaven might have resembled this.

Yes, there are elements of Welsh's novel that are missing (no police dogs here…) from Filth but there always have to be excisions for film adaptations and there's no reason, in this instance at least, to mark down a film for that. No, Filth is superb and as near to perfect as I've seen for many months (since Broken and Trance).

If the trailer excited you, take the plunge. If you're a nun, a granny, my mother, or lack a strong stomach and nurture your prudishness, take a very long, very fast walk in the direction of something much safer. Dixon of Dock Green this ain't!

If you look in the mirror and see something slightly off-kilter grinning back, however…

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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.

Remember when Ewan McGregor played in a little movie called Trainspotting? The film was made after a book by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh and it was an intense and often funny window into the complete wasting of human life due to heroin. It made McGregor famous.

Now, James McAvoy has no need to be made famous, he already is, and he showed he is a great actor in several movies; he is on a roll. But in this film, also made from an Irvine Welsh book, he really outdid himself, playing a deranged police inspector torn apart by addiction, grief and madness.

The film itself is difficult to explain and, perhaps, it would be more clear to me if I would have read the book first. Some of the characters I have no idea who they were and why he was interacting with them in the first place. Also the ending is pretty much the antithesis of the one in Trainspotting. Here, there is no hope.

The direction was good, I guess, as well as the general production values. A bunch of known, but usually secondary actors fill the cast, with often interesting results, but let's face it, the film is mostly a one man show and McAvoy was up for the job. I just wish the story would have been less confusing.

Conclusion: it would be a shame not to watch this film, even if you end up not liking it for some reason. You need to be familiar with Scottish accents or use a subtitle to get what people are saying. Other than that, great work, James!

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 :)

There is no other way that I could describe this film. It is filled with some of the most crazy and strange scenes that I have seen in film. There was weird sex, masturbating, murder, drugs. Pretty much everything offensive that you could think of is in this film.

It made me laugh, cringe and frown at some of the ridiculous stuff that happened in it.

Deep in the storyline though, was an utterly captivating, yet tragic story of a man loosing his mind to drugs, mental illness and grief. In many ways it was this that made the film all the more shocking, but brilliant at the same time.

I came out of the theatre speechless, I had no idea what to make of it or think. Now I have thought about it, I can see how good it really was.

James McAvoy gave a perfect performance in the lead role. Everything about the character that he portrayed was realistic, and I could feel the emotion coming out of him throughout his descent into madness.

This film is not for the faint of heart or easily disturbed, but if you can deal with the weird and wacky, then you are going to love it.