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!

FILTH is the perfect title for this filthy, bottom-of-the-barrel Scottish comedy that comes to us courtesy of the novel by TRAINSPOTTING writer Irvine Welsh. I should make it clear that I consider TRAINSPOTTING to be one of the most overrated films of the 1990s so I had little hopes of enjoying this similarly depraved film either.

And I was right: FILTH is everything I hate about modern so-called 'comedies'. It's a film that goes out of its way to offend everyone, with below the belt gags taking in all manner of outrageous situations and depravities. I honestly don't find the material here to be funny in the slightest, but it doesn't surprise me that others crack up at this sort of stuff; I have a very old-fashioned sense of humour.

The film is also flawed in presenting us with a protagonist who is so irredeemably corrupt that there's no way he can come back from it, so attempts to make him sympathetic to the viewer just don't work. James McAvoy's character wants stringing up, not praising. The only positive thing I can find about the whole experience is that McAvoy's incredibly dedicated performance is out of this world, and I can only wish he had been employed in a better movie. He's be a perfect fit for Macbeth, for example.

In Edinburgh, Scotland, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson (James McAvoy) is obsessed with getting a promotion. His wife Carole has left with their daughter. There is a high profile case of the murder of a Japanese student. Bruce aims to undermine his competition taking advantage of their shortcomings. DS Ray Lennox (Jamie Bell) is the junkie rookie with a small penis. DS Amanda Drummond (Imogen Poots) is a woman. DS Peter Inglis is a metro-sexual. DCI Toal is the boss. DS Peter Inglis is very Scottish. DS Gus Bain is an idiot. Bruce takes advantage of his meek friend Clifford Blades and he's under treatment with Dr. Rossi (Jim Broadbent) for an earlier trauma. He fails to save Mary's husband with CPR and she's grateful for the effort.

Bruce Robertson is a great character for McAvoy. He has loads of fun doing some reprehensible things. Jamie Bell is terrific. The murder case bothered me because I kept trying to follow it. The case needs to be a Mcguffin. Showing the murder in the beginning is distracting. The movie is also disjointed with a lot of surreal turns in Bruce's disturbed mind. It's hard to piece some of it together especially with the imaginary Carole. Overall, it's a great character who does some wickedly funny schemes.