Filth

Grade: C-

*This review was originally published at Movie Mezzanine.

Telling a story entirely through the perspective of a film’s main character is a tricky proposition if that character is a drug-addled, hallucinating, misogynist wreck of a human being. Such filmmaking is tantamount to daring the audience to endure a high-tempo, stylistically overbearing exercise in full and leave the theatre with their sanity intact. “Enter the mind of this wretched man and exit exactly like him” seems to be what Filth, Jon S. Baird’s take on the Irvine Welsh novel of the same name, instructs us to do. This is an adaptation that doubles down on Welsh’s already raucous prose and delivers a film that slowly tightens its noose around the audience’s neck before finally kicking them off the chair.

Bruce Robertson (James McAvoy) is the center of the film’s universe, the man whose perspective we share. Filth takes two parallel but separate routes in defining this character –both ‘character’ and ‘defining’ used very loosely here: the first through his daily routines in the police force and the second through hallucinatory flashbacks. The former shows him to be a corrupt cop who obliterates anything that blocks his path to self-satisfaction and gaining a promotion. He forces himself on underage women, consumes more drugs than seems humanly possible, sleeps with his colleagues’ wives and plays brutal, life-changing pranks on his coworkers; the latter, the flashbacks, show him to be a guilt-ridden father whose broken marriage has left him without the wife and child he seemingly loves despite himself. It is also implied that a childhood incident which led to the death of his brother has caused irreversible trauma.

Filth begins with Bruce’s assignment to a case involving the murder of a Japanese student by a violent gang of Edinburgh youth, but it is immediately evident that his mission is not solving the mystery, but fulfilling as many self-destructive, hedonistic desires as possible. These digressions from the original case are repeated multiple times, and combined with Bruce’s hallucinations, are designed to emulate his state of mind. Instead, they serve to divest the plot of any coherence. Neither the gradual exposition of Bruce’s past, nor the unyielding persistence with which his misdemeanor is portrayed can make his character believable or relatable.

X-Men: First Class

Grade: B-

X-Men: First Class, as the title suggests, tells the story of the beginnings of the X-Men crew, meaning that a group of young and attractive people are getting together in this film to save the world using their overdeveloped genes. The first “few” minutes of the film are spent jumping from 1944 to 1962 and criss-crossing between different locations several times, providing us the back story of Charles, Raven and Erik. Charles (James McAvoy) is a genius who has the power to read and control minds. Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) is a blue-skinned, yellow-eyed, red-haired mutant who can shape shift into anyone else -- and, given that power, why not choose to look like Jennifer Lawrence, of course?) Erik (Michael Fassbender) is a survivor of the Holocaust and the evil of Sebastien Shaw (played by Kevin Bacon) who has the magnetic power to control metals.

These early introductions are put together so tightly and cover so much ground – and in such an indulgent amount of time – that the film begins to drag and confuse. X-Men: First Class doesn’t actually get on track until it slows down to explore the personal dynamics between these characters; the film's best moments arrive when Charles and Erik finally meet and the two actors get to show their remarkable chemistry. McAvoy proves, yet again, that he deserves to be one of the cinema's biggest superstars and Fassbender exhibits the charms and charisma that has kept audiences wondering about the odds of him taking over Daniel Craig as the next 007. Jennifer Lawrence, too, is a standout in this film, fleshing out her character into something more believable and interesting than written for her on the paper.

X-Men: First Class, unlike most of Marvel’s recent outings, doesn't give the impression that its raison d'être is to take money from the audience's wallets and put it in Marvel's own. If one can get on board with the logic of this film, it is one hell of a treat. The visual effects are neatly composed and even though they look too artificial often -- how can you get away from that these days? -- they serve the story well, as opposed to the opposite. At the very least, this isn't in 3D, which is always welcome! Most impressive is the film's sound work, especially during Professor X’s mind reading sequences and the moments wherein Magneto is "focusing".

Technical accomplishments aside, however, the basic logic of the premise remains inescapably outlandish. A thrilling action ride this is, but one that remains unsatisfying because it cannot transcend the trappings of its genre. This is not to say that all superhero films need to utilize the same sense of hefty self-importance as Christopher Nolan's Batman to be successful, but pure entertainment such as this will not linger once the curtains close if there is no thematically resonant element to mull over. X-Men: First Class is as good as it can be for a film's with such limited ambitions, and an audience more attuned to the appeal of superheroes than this writer will surely find it a more gratifying experience.