Trainspotting

A shocking, painfully subjective trawl through the Edinburgh heroin culture of the 1980s, Irvine Welsh’s cult novel was hardly an obvious choice for the team who made Shallow Grave. Yet the film proved a smash hit, especially in the UK, where it seemed to herald a new era. Punching up the pitch-black comedy, juggling parallel character strands and juxtaposing image, music and voice-over with a virtuosity worthy of Scorsese on peak form, Trainspotting the movie captures precisely Welsh’s insolent, amoral intelligence.

Nihilism runs deep in this movie, emotion cannot be countenanced, only blocked off by another hit, another gag, but the anarchic, exhilarating rush of the highs can’t drown out the subsequent, devastating lows — these are two sides of the same desperation. Danny Boyle’s intuitive, vital, empathetic direction pushes so far, the movie flies on sheer momentum — that and bravura performances from Ewen Bremner’s gormless Spud, Robert Carlyle’s terrifying Begbie and, especially, Ewan McGregor’s Renton, who supplies a low-key, charismatic centre.

Content Considerations: Drug & alcohol abuse

It would be hard to imagine a movie about drugs, depravity, and all-around bad behavior more electrifying than Trainspotting.

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

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