Filth

Filth is a 2013 psychological black comedy crime film written and directed by Jon S. Baird, based on Irvine Welsh's 1998 novel Filth. The film was released on 27 September 2013 in Scotland, 4 October 2013 elsewhere in the United Kingdom and in Ireland, and on 30 May 2014 in the United States. It stars James McAvoy, Jamie Bell, and Jim Broadbent. Plot Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson, a scheming, manipulative, misanthropic bully, spends his free time indulging in drugs, alcohol, abusive sexual relationships, and "the games" — his euphemism for vindictive plots he hatches to cause trouble for people he dislikes, including many of his colleagues in the Edinburgh police force. Bruce also delights in bullying and taking advantage of his mild-mannered friend Clifford Blades, a member of Bruce's masonic lodge, whose wife, Bunty, is the target of his repeated obscene phone calls. He only shows genuine warmth to Mary and her young son, the widowed wife and child of a man whom he tries and fails to resuscitate after he suffers a heart attack in the street. As the story begins, Bruce's main goal is to gain a promotion to become Detective Inspector, the path to which appears to open when he is assigned to oversee the investigation into the murder of a Japanese exchange student. However, Bruce slowly loses his grip on reality as he works the case and has more and more vivid hallucinations.