Filth is ghastly and unpleasant, but also kind of brilliant, and therein lies both the reward and the rub.

| Sep 5, 2018

To its detriment, Filth too often pulls its punches, and if you're striving for pitch black, that is most definitely a cardinal sin.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 5, 2014

"Filth" lives up to its title and then some, but a no-holds performance by James McAvoy is reason enough to watch.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 5, 2014

Credit the filmmakers with descending persuasively into the swampy squalor of a diseased mind. If you're in the mood to go there with them, Filth offers an indecently bracing wallow.

| May 30, 2014

I'm not sure I can recommend the movie, but this actor and this performance are something to behold.

| May 30, 2014

Viewers hungry for a catch-all dose of Welshian sardonicism would be better served checking out Trainspotting. Better soundtrack, for one.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 30, 2014

"Filth" demonstrates that contemporary filmmakers would do well to fine new ways of getting their hands dirty.

| Original Score: 1/4 | May 30, 2014

If this film feels dated, its because director Jon S. Baird adheres to Danny Boyle's style, with all the visual flourishes and accelerated editing that seem mandatory when translating Welsh's prose.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 29, 2014

Unlike Jude Law's similarly offensive title character in Dom Hemingway, McAvoy is given a far better story to work from.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 29, 2014

After a certain point, watching it is like listening to the ravings of an increasingly incoherent and abusive drunk.

| May 29, 2014

Exhausting in its relentless depravity, "Filth" nevertheless is reminiscent of a much better movie also adapted from a novel by Irvine Welsh: Danny Boyle's 1996 "Trainspotting."

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 29, 2014

Even tastelessness requires some consistency of acrid flavoring, and "Filth" uneasily mixes a not-uninteresting character study in self-destruction with '90s-nostalgic stylings...

| May 29, 2014

Filth, directed by Jon S. Baird from a 1998 bestseller by Trainspotting wild man Irvine Welsh, is wired to explode. Even when the film falls to pieces, McAvoy's bonkers brilliance will blow you away.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 29, 2014

Manic but often morbidly fun ...

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 29, 2014

Exhausting every trick in the book to illustrate the depravity of its protagonist, the film grows as out of control as its washed up anti-hero.

| Original Score: D- | May 29, 2014

A cop caper that more than lives up to its name.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 28, 2014

Filth ends up wheezing across the finish line, dragging a load of kinky juvenilia behind it.

| May 27, 2014

Ultimately, the film is too nihilistic to believe its protagonist can be saved, declaring him a lost soul and satisfied to let him suffer.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 26, 2014

Filth's Hobbesian take on human behavior rings true but is always writ large...Sadly, write-director Jon S. Baird has lost much of the ingenuity of Welsh's 1998 source novel.

| May 9, 2014

For a film boasting only marginally fewer producers than it does speaking roles, there's something impressively unguarded about Filth.

| Nov 24, 2013