Like The Wolf of Wall Street, Filth (based on the Irvine Welsh book) features a boyish leading man in a spectacular performance as a drug-enhanced (and later -addled) Machiavelli. Vial after vial of cocaine goes up high-functioning cop Bruce Robertson's (James McAvoy in, to use a magazine cliche, the performance of his career) nose as he manipulates, bullies, womanizes and pranks his way through life just because he can, or so it seems.

Charlie Countryman (Shia LaBeouf) sees dead people. Or rather, he sees plot devices. Two encounters with the other side push him, respectively, to Bucharest and into the arms of cello-playing, self-aware manic pixie dream girl Gabi (Evan Rachel Wood). Along the way, he meets and gets into trouble with a pair of holidaying losers (James Buckley and Rupert Grint), whose only purpose seem to be to deliver our protagonist into the hands of violent Eastern European mob types, one of which just so happens to be Gabi's husband, Nigel (Mads Mikkelsen).