James McAvoy's genuinely great performance is the only thing worth watching, but other than that there isn't much more to it.

This is a shonky adaptation in which nothing hangs together.

Crude comedy.

Filth ends up leaving you with a bad taste in your mouth, not because of the content (you get what you would expect with such a title), but because it ends up getting nowhere with its shallow attempts at a plot and overanxious attempts to be bizarre.

It's called "Filth." Who says there's no truth in advertising?

Here is a relentlessly shallow and nihilistic movie, a 97-minute exercise in cynicism with nothing of substance standing in a manic foreground.

The film gets so worked up trying to shock you, to put James McAvoy and his accomplished co-stars through the nasty paces, that it lands with a thud.

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

The hodgepodge of genre elements, loose narrative threads and ungainly tonal shifts keep the audience at a distance, a point from which everything appears increasingly bizarre and meaningless.

ultimately a forgettable film

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

There's nothing much here for those outside the PG Disney Princess-aimed target market to sink their horns into.

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

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

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

wallows in itself for its entire runtime and tries to come out clean on the other end

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."

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

It's filmmaking with a big, stupid grin on its face.

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.