Filth – Film Review
Director: Jon S. Baird
Starring: James McAvoy, Imogen Poots, Jamie Bell and Jim Broadbent
Release Date: Oct 4
Bruce Robinson (James McAvoy) a corrupt policeman, manipulates and cheats his way to a promotion while also indulging in a general spiral of deviance and debauchery in Filth. Written and directed by Jon S. Baird and based on the novel by Irvine Welsh, Filth also features performances by Shauna MacDonald, Jamie Bell, Eddie Marsan, Imogen Poots, Jim Broadbent and many more.
A smart and obvious decision made in the marketing of this film has been the mentioning that its based on a book by Irvine Welsh, the same author as Trainspotting. Of course any film would want to show off any association with Trainspotting but also it gives the audience an indication of what they’re in for and in this case, similar to Trainspotting, Filth provides content that is not for the faint of heart, but in a brightly coloured, slightly more cartoony tone.
James McAvoy narrates and carries the film with great darkly humoured charm and the rest of the cast are spot on as well. While the film has an overall follow through, it mainly consists of various set pieces that feel rather individually self contained but none the less the film breezes through each scene with good wit and easy pace and the truth is Filth is mostly a dark but pleasant watch.
Unfortunately, there are a few problems however. While the film is perfectly entertaining, it isn’t the most original of character pieces. I’ll admit it’s a bit unfair to criticise the film for this alone as I’m sure the filmmakers were well aware of what inspirational material they were borrowing from and the movie does contain plenty of allusions to things like Taxi Driver and particularly A Clockwork Orange, not to mention quite a few to director Stanley Kubrick himself.
More significantly an issue with the film is that, despite being well made, well performed and having a good pace, the film ends up feeling overall like it’s a bit much, and that’s not a comment on the film’s mature content. In fact, as 18s certified films go, it’s not the heaviest. The problem is that, to be blunt, Filth has just about too much material in it. Although each individual piece is well delivered there were a couple of characters and subplots that I felt just didn’t need to be in the film and distracted from whatever overall message the film had, which I still feel confused about and, without saying too much about how it ends, the conclusion wasn’t as subtle and shocking as it needed to be to really top things off.
While I haven’t read the original book Trainspotting myself, I have often heard how in Danny Boyle’s film, the focus was reduced to a single character and much of the content of the book was scaled down to tell a slightly simpler story, as is often necessary in the format of film. Even though I may not know for sure, it would seem that this approach of scaling the content down was somewhat missing in adapting the book Filth which felt a bit ironic whenever the film made its aforementioned references to Kubrick, since this was something he was particularly noted for doing.
The film also feels very over produced (a quick check of the credits will reveal that Filth had quite an excessive amount of producers including McAvoy himself) and while I don’t know the budget involved, it would appear that maybe there was just a bit too much money to spend, given some extra features and a particular cameo that, while enjoyable, didn’t feel needed.
The fact that Filth is overloaded is the kind of thing that I think, a film could get away with were it a more original kind of story but as I have said, it’s not really the kind of thing we haven’t seen before in films like Taxi Driver, both Bad Lieutenants and to a degree A Clockwork Orange. But again I don’t want to emphasise that point too much as it’s still perfectly well made.
Despite having these problems, they aren’t altogether too severe, and in the end Filth is a perfectly entertaining and funny watch with excellent performances, good pace and while the storytelling may be flawed, it’s still followable which is always good. Obviously it’s not for the squeamish but it’s otherwise worth checking out.
Score: 3.5/5
Written by Sèamus Hanly
