25 Greatest Film Deaths This Century

Filth takes Irvine Welsh’s DS Bruce Robertson and brings him to life, via James McAvoy, in habitually manic fashion. Bruce is a hard-drinking, rapacious, and corrupt detective who stalks Edinburgh’s streets and puts the criminals to shame. Suffering from severe, untreated and long-standing mental health issues, he goes to any lengths to avoid sobriety, routinely tortures his unassuming pal Clifford “Bladesey” Blades (Eddie Marsan), and the only person he cares for in his life is Mary (Joanne Froggatt), a widow whom he barely knows.

Having torpedoed his career, we find Bruce in the film’s closing scene getting cleaned up and dressed in his old uniform. He sets his affairs in order, puts together a package and has a last drink. Bruce’s confession on the video tape that he sends Bladesey narrates his final moments, while he prepares to hang himself from his football scarf, standing on a chair in his front hall, a cover of Radiohead’s “Creep” building to crescendo.

It’s fraught and emotional, and then, as he’s teetering on the edge, Mary and her son ring the doorbell. Bruce manages to hold the chair steady on two legs, but when their shadows recede from behind the glass, he breaks the fourth wall to say his catchphrase, "Same rules apply," and laugh as the chair slides out from under him. This injection of dark humour offsets the moment and hits us with a sucker punch right as the credits roll.