Jon S. Baird
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Connections, in both directions
“A Clockwork Orange” is obviously the primary homage, but traces of “American Psycho” also sneak in – the scenes of Bruce doing drugs at the nightclub with his co-workers are surprisingly parallel to Patrick Bateman’s – and there are isolated moments of paranoia and brutal vulgarity that recall David Cronenberg’s “Naked Lunch” and even Martin Scorsese’s “ The Wolf of Wall Street.
It’s one of those rare films that presents you with a totally bankrupt character, and makes you want him to succeed in his illegal endeavors, not unlike Alex De Large in A Clockwork Orange.
The references to A Clockwork Orange seem leaden and obvious.
At times, this pig in a china shop suggests a descendant of Alex from “A Clockwork Orange,” and he is sometimes filmed as such, with distorting, wide-angle shots.
Adapted (and softened) from the 1998 Irvine Welsh novel of the same name, Filth combines the sleaze of Bad Lieutenant with the gauche giddiness of Dom Hemingway , eventually metastasizing into a desperate movie about a desperate man.
Filth is bolstered by a gonzo performance from McAvoy, who seems determined to out-Bad Lieutenant the American Bad Lieutenants; like his Yankee counterparts Harvey Keitel and Nicolas Cage, he even does a scene where he coaxes sexual favors while on duty.
A self-serving Detective Sergeant in the Lothian constabulary, Bruce makes Bad Lieutenant look like a virginal vicar as he shags, snorts and schemes his way around Edinburgh, feeding his out-of-control addictions and monstrous libido.
Close cousins to Filth are In Bruges and Werner Herzog’s re-imagining of Bad Lieutenant, both of which had moral vacuums for main characters and were similarly contented in their carefree depiction of sex, violence and hardcore drug-use.
Think of a more psychedelic version of Bad Lieutenant – one that nearly borders on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – and you’ll be in the right cognitive space.
“A Clockwork Orange” is obviously the primary homage, but traces of “American Psycho” also sneak in – the scenes of Bruce doing drugs at the nightclub with his co-workers are surprisingly parallel to Patrick Bateman’s – and there are isolated moments of paranoia and brutal vulgarity that recall David Cronenberg’s “Naked Lunch” and even Martin Scorsese’s “ The Wolf of Wall Street.
Tapping into a rich literary-cinematic lineage that includes Bad Lieutenant and American Psycho, McAvoy portrays Robertson as both charismatic charmer and unreliable narrator, occasionally breaking the fourth wall to share a sick smile with the audience.
“A Clockwork Orange” is obviously the primary homage, but traces of “American Psycho” also sneak in – the scenes of Bruce doing drugs at the nightclub with his co-workers are surprisingly parallel to Patrick Bateman’s – and there are isolated moments of paranoia and brutal vulgarity that recall David Cronenberg’s “Naked Lunch” and even Martin Scorsese’s “ The Wolf of Wall Street.
This is the same grotesque larger-than-life world as Irvine Welsh’s hit Trainspotting but without Danny Boyle’s pounding vibe and cool soundtrack.
Writer/director Jon S. Baird based his screenplay a novel by Irvine Welsh – there’s a Trainspotting reference barely a minute into the movie – and lets the author’s sublime energy infect the production.
The brutality of Bruce’s actions, combined with the film’s jaunty, often surrealist tone, give Filth’s humor its bitter sting, as might be expected from an adaptation of an Irvine Welsh novel—this is, after all, the same author who wrote Trainspotting, where a Scottish junkie dives into a public toilet and hallucinates a dead baby on the ceiling.
All Trainspotting temptations aside (we waited to see if you recognized Welsh’s name before offering up this reference point), material like this can’t be grounded in reality.
From the bigoted, corrupt, drug-addicted cop protagonist, the verbose voiceover narration, the stylistic bombast reminiscent of Trainspotting , and the costumes (half Seventies retro suits, half Edinburgh normcore), to the silly final plot twist and supercool nihilism, this one’s sure to delight the Tarantino set.
Quentin Tarantino ’s 1994 " Pulp Fiction " gets a lot of grief for wellspringing, that is, for inspiring a container ship gross of (largely) inferior "edgy" genre pictures overstuffed with blood, guts, octane, and classic rock soundtracks.
With a great kitchen-sink cast (particularly Game Of Thrones’ Richard Dormer), and a moral murk so fetid even Harvey Keitel’s Bad Lieutenant might consider bailing out, it feels sickeningly, mundanely real, like The Bill does Filth .
Unlike last year’s Filth , though, Hyena doesn’t come across as if it’s reveling in its characters’ bad behavior.
While the flavorful Turkish-culture backdrop occasionally glimpsed could ideally have conjured a worthwhile U.K. variant on Omar Shargawi's pulsating tale of Copenhagen's Muslim community, Go With Peace Jamil, Johnson disappointingly settles for yet another flat-foot foray into the world of "dodgy" cops as seen in The Sweeney, Welcome to the Punch and Filth.
The narrative is basically a pastiche of elements cobbled together from such inspirations as the aforementioned "Bad Lieutenant," " Taken ," "Taxi Driver" and " Filth ," Irvine Walsh's darkly comic study of a thoroughly monstrous U.K. cop that was the basis for an equally lurid screen adaptation with James McAvoy in the lead role.
Logan’s corrupt investigator shares the same rotten traits as James McAvoy’s character in last year’s Filth, but this portrait is less personal because it’s the whole scene that stinks.
In terms of actions and attitude, Logan is a character not a million miles removed from James McAvoy’s coke-addled policeman in last year’s “Filth.”
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
Directed by Terry Gilliam
influenced Filth (2013)
Visuals Themes
It's flat-out bonkers, aspiring to the sort of shock hallucinatory eff- ects successfully achieved by, say, Terry Gilliam in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."
Think of a more psychedelic version of Bad Lieutenant – one that nearly borders on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – and you’ll be in the right cognitive space.
Those daydreams, set in some inescapable room with Broadbent’s sinister doctor lecturing the ‘hero’ about life, could have escaped from the cutting room floor of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.
By the time we reach the denouement, in which the plot's nominal murder mystery descends into an overegged hybrid of Psycho and Dressed to Kill, the acerbic gallows humour and scathing misanthropy have become more exhausting than epiphanic.
"Filth" is based on a novel by Irvine Welsh, the Scottish author who apparently trades one-word titles with Chuck Palahniuk: OK, you take "Choke," I'll take "Filth," you take "Snuff," I'll take "Porno," etc. Welsh wrote "Trainspotting," back when he had something to say and wasn't just trying to shock for shock's sake.
If nothing else, "Filth" offers a very different side of James McAvoy than the one for which he's best known: the young Charles Xavier in "X-Men."
Based on Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh’s novel, the role is a stunning departure for McAvoy (The Last King of Scotland, Atonement and X-Men’s Charles Xavier).
Back in the mid 1990s, when British cinema was still basking in the success of Working Title’s Four Weddings and a Funeral , Danny Boyle’s Irvine Welsh adaptation Trainspotting seemed hugely refreshing simply because it wasn’t a romantic comedy or a costume drama.
It’s all set at Christmastime; the sight of a urinating Santa notwithstanding, there’s nothing here to threaten “It’s a Wonderful Life” for holiday-standard status.
Boyle takes some knocks for his love of grotesque situations, but most of his films have a fundamental humanity below the surface that makes their bleak edges slide down smoothly: Think of Jamal’s beaming smile in Slumdog Millionaire, even after he steps out of a pile of excrement.
Yet like other cracks at jerry-rigging Welsh’s foul-mouthed, thickly accented, stream-of- consciousness prose for the screen (1998’s The Acid House, 2011’s Irvine Welsh’s Ecstasy), Filth feels like a mawkish, embarrassing imitation; a blundering attempt to rebottle lightning.
However, Danny Boyle’s modern classic doth bestride the world of the Irvine Welsh adaptation like a colossus, its shadow seemingly impossible to escape from, so there is a glass-half-full way of looking at it: “Filth” is undoubtedly better than also-rans “The Acid House” and “Ecstasy.”
Quizá, la versión cinematográfica pudo haber sido más sucia y pútrida, pero el realizador británico, Jon S. Baird (Cass, 2008), es capaz de recuperar el caos emocional, la atmósfera de libertinaje y el atrevido tono de humor negro presentes en la fuente original para que el filme, afortunadamente, se erija en un tono más cercano a la odisea de los adictos a la heroína de Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996) que a las otras traducciones fílmicas menos acertadas como The Acid House (Paul McGuigan, 1998) y Ecstasy (Rob Heydon, 2011).
In the film, we get to meet their wives - Laurel's Russian wife Ida (Nina Arianda; Midnight in Paris) and Hardy's small-in-stature wife Lucille (Shirley Henderson; Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire).
Close cousins to Filth are In Bruges and Werner Herzog’s re-imagining of Bad Lieutenant, both of which had moral vacuums for main characters and were similarly contented in their carefree depiction of sex, violence and hardcore drug-use.