A bent copper is a stock figure in films, but Bruce Robertson – as interpreted
by James McAvoy – is not merely bent, but rolling around in corruption like a
mad dog in a sewage pit: he has plunged into the moral mire until only the
whites of his eyes are visible, and even they are bloodshot. He can’t help
it: his character originates from the novel Filth by the Scottish author Irvine Welsh, a writer not known for understatement with regard to the
seamy side of the Scottish street.
Robertson, a veteran of the Edinburgh police force, is devoted to what he
calls “the games”: the manipulation of others in pointless and often cruel
ways. Early on, we watch him grab a helium balloon from a small boy, and
deliberately let it sail into the sky.His longed-for promotion hinges on his ability to solve the murder of a
Japanese student, but the stuff of sex, sadness and self-loathing keeps
getting in the way. Robertson crashes through official procedure: plotting
furiously against his hated colleagues; blackmailing an under-age teenage
girl for oral sex, then jeering at her technique; and snorting great stacks
of cocaine.
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