Customer Rating:  
Summary: style over substance
Comment: as someone from Edinburgh who lived and went to plenty of the places mentioned in Trainspotting i have to say read the book the book instead which has the full content and message rather than just a comic short hand for what was happening at the time. It made fashionista fools think that taking hard drugs was a nice activity and gave them kudos and brought in too many people too Edinburgh looking for that lifestyle.
I have never managed it all the way through and think it is just an alternative advert for Britain for the naively trendy or people who misguided enough to think that the pathos and dark humor wasn't there to balance the story...great cast though and on the whole well acted but an overrated footnote to late 90's Britain
Customer Rating:
Summary: champion stuff
Comment: Trainspotting caught a nations breath when it was released in 1996,it felt when i look back that the entire world had seen it and not only enjoyed it,but learnt the script,picked up the phrases and gave the film a success that few in the studio at the time would have predicted,the soundtrack sold like hotcakes,people picked their character in the film that they admired and this film was as much an icon of the 90s as cds,oasis and four weddings and a funeral to name just a few.
Twelve of so years have passed and you are indeed entitled to ask if this film has aged,after watching it for the first time in a while the other day i am happy to say it hasnt,none of its initial magic has been lost,granted i wasnt obsessed with this at the time,i liked it and that soundtrack had no appeal for a lad like me but this is a great film adapted from a book i havent read but can assume it isnt bad.
The film deals with the harshest of drugs,heroin and how it affects a key number of players and those around them,the film is lively,nasty,comical and trippy,all things that you would expect,it is a film that just works on many levels and came into the world at a time that felt right,much like lock ,stock and two smoking barrels which was released two years later,this is a great and dare i say vital film.
Customer Rating:
Summary: one of the best films!
Comment: One of my all time favourite films, although I haven't bothered to watch any of the extras.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Choose Life, Choose "Trainspotting"
Comment: There are better, bolder, and more profoundly made British films than Trainspotting, but if there's one certainity in its presence, it's that it is the British film. There are movies like David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Hodges' Get Carter (1971) which are always seen on the critics lists as best of all times, but there is no doubt that Trainspotting (1996) is the most important British film ever made. Maybe even the finest. The movies' ninety minutes does the impossible: It expounds the grittiness of hard drugs, interprets the philosophy of life, develops heroes and villans when, really, they are in the same position, and delineates the British heritage in the nineties.
All of this is viewed in the eyes of Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor), a mid-thirties Heroin-addict living in a disease-wrenching flat in the ghettoes of Edinborough. His philosophy is correct, throughout the movie's opening sequence he describes to us his theory: Go out, get a job, a group of friends, a wife, a family, a plasma screen television. But as he makes clear, he has never chosen this lifestyle. And it all vindicates around one word: Heroin.
The reasons why he first turned to Heroin are never explained, but the reasons for quitting are made totally obvious. The blood-stained, carpetless floors of the flat, the chaotic screams of the neighbours, and the snetches of nearby garbage are minor on Mark Renton's list. In fact, many of his reasons for quitting smack were probably the reasons that forced him into it: Mates.
There's Sick Boy (Johnny Lee Miller), the blond-haired, handsome yet selfishly idiotic Sean Connery wannabe. Spud (Ewen Bremner) who has always played as one of Mark Renton's proper mates. Tommy (Kevin McKidd) who decides to turn to Heroin after his wife, Lizzie (Pauline Lynch) leaves him for misplacing their home porn for a 100 Greatest Goals video. And then there's Francis Begbie (Robert Carlyle), the sadist, who Renton informs of doing people rather than doing Heroin. What a lad, that Begbie is.
Throughout the film, Renton's relationship towards his friends are never really displayed as good ones. They just seem like various characters who tend to hang around with each other. Everybody gets on each other's nerves, apart from Spud. Spud is the character who manages to hold the characters relationships between friendly and choatic, especially when Begbie is involved, who insists on carrying a blade around with himself for human protection.
The movie was originally written as a novel by Irvine Welsh, whose novel is still being re-visited today. Readers of the book would be familiar with the differences between it and the film. The book had central characters that weren't portrayed in the movie, and some with a cameo performance. I read Trainspotting not too long ago, and re-watching the film today, I have noticed many differences in which the story is told. Throughout the book, the stories are being told by different characters (Renton, Begbie, Tommy, Spud, Sick Boy), but the entire ninety minutes of the film is told within Renton's view. Which is always seen as normal for a movie, but personally I would have loved to have seen the intercuts between characters telling the stories. We get insights; Begbie tells a story about how he managed to win a Pool game without pulling out his knife, just before throwing a quarter-full glass of beer over a balcony. And then we get the real story from Tommy, who pursuades to us that Begbie was playing `skag', and manages to break a snooker cue over a crisp-munching, beer-guzzling visitor. Is this the truth? Who knows. Renton does say that "Tommy always tells the truth, it's one of his weaknesses. He never lies, never takes drugs, never cheated on anyone...", but these stories are told to us through Renton. He is the central character, and stays like that throughout the movie.
If there's one thing that Trainspotting manages to do better than anything else, it is to make the audience aware of Renton's conditions. All though he is a Heroin-addict, a thief, a liar, and a menace to society, he is the only character in the movie that we can trust. And that we gain positive feelings for. Sick Boy is a traitor, and Begbie is a psycho. Our relationships with all the characters in Trainspotting reflect upon Renton's. And his feelings are the same. When he needs his final hit, so do we. The need for hard drugs is made so clear in Trainspotting, it works so well that we cannot settle until Renton has accomplished his need. Even if we don't want him too.
But neither does he. If there's one thing that Renton wants more than anything else, it's a life without Heroin. His hatred towards Heroin is portrayed, but his love for it is too mighty to be taken over. He explains to us throughout the opening sequence, "take the greatest Orgasm you've ever had, multiply it by ten, and you're still nowhere near how good it is". But what about the others? Sick Boy isn't a Heroin addict, he just does it as a part-time thing. When Renton decides to get off Heroin, as does Sick Boy. Not because he wants to, just to show Renton how easily he can do it.
The movie is full of great cameos: Peter Mullan has an onscreen performance as the `Mother Superier' Swanney (whom is given that name due to the length of his habit), Dale Winton plays as himself in a guest star television show, Shirley Henderson as Spud's part-time girlfriend Gail, and even Irvine Welsh as the sneaky drug-smuggler Mikey Forester. Many of the faces you will recongize.
The roots of the movie are well known. When it was first released in the US, the producers had to re-dub more intelligible Scottish accents in the first 20 minutes because apparently "they couldn't understand what was going on". The accents add to the movie's grittiness. They are not pleasant accents; they are lower-class, aggressive, re-pulsive Edinborough-based voices which had to be learnt by the movie's cast. Most of the cast are Scottish, so the accent wasn't half as hard, but they still needed tweaking. One of the sequences is understandable, the dialogue between Tommy and Spud when they are in the Moloko Milkbar-based nightclub, there are subtitles projected on the bottom of the screen as they talk. The noise and off screen chatters make it hard to understand the gentlemen's voices.
Many people I know have complained that the movie is too gritty. They complain that the drug sequences are too graphic, and therefore hard to watch. I have never found that a problem. Sure, Trainspotting portrays Heroin addicts as normal civilized-people, and the sequences are a little heafty, but there are needed. They have meaning. The movie is, after all, described as a Dramatic Comedy on the IMDb. It is a fairly light portray, compared with its influence, Welshs' novel.
Trainspotting has now become one of the most famous films of all time. The posters have become cliches (both the promotional posters, and the `Choose Life' poster), the opening sequence has been re-acted dozens of times, and the soundtrack is the biggest-selling since Saturday Night Fever. The connections are as famous. What's more famous, Ewan McGregor pacing down the streets of Edinborough to Lust For Life, or John Travolta suaving down the sidewalks of New York to Stayin' Alive? You decide.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Choose the best British film of 1996
Comment: Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter John Hodge's 1996 adaptation of Irvine Welsh's 1993 debut novel was so central to young British culture at that time that it was always in danger of being forgotten as a mere curio of a bygone Britpop era. Thankfully, good comedy leads a long life, especially the black stuff. In the meanest, wittiest way, Trainspotting said "bollocks" to Britpop - in fact, it said "bollocks" to every fad and fashion going - and so it became immortal.
Welsh's novel is, like many of his works, essentially a series of short stories bound together by a group of amiable, self-centred protagonists who share a common interest in the procurement of a life-affirming experience - in this case heroin. Unfilmable as such, Boyle and Hodge do an astonishing job of wrapping up a majority of the best Edinburgh tales in a tight 90-minute narrative. The misadventures of Renton (Ewan McGregor), Spud (Ewen Bremner) et al is alluring because their lust for life eclipses their need for skag - the physical enjoyment is never denied, and yet neither is our heroes' desire to see above and beyond the depravity and the mundanity. The film-makers are not simply allowing us to relate to these emaciated thieves - they are necessarily ensuring it.
The casting is spot-on. McGregor puts in a signature performance as the amiable Mark Renton; Bremner brings the sensitive Spud hilariously to life; Robert Carlyle is unforgettable as the monstrous Francis Begbie - a man I fear we have all met and to whose jokes we have all felt obliged to laugh. Johnny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, and feature debutant Kelly Macdonald support superbly.
What's the point of it all? you might ask. To say its simply about capturing a moment in British pop culture would be to deny the quality of its storytelling. Trainspotting is more than a zeitgeist because, for all its swagger and the brilliance of its soundtrack, it possesses an intricate, multi-taloned narrative navigated by 3D characters, more than one of whom finds his way to an uplifting and hopeful conclusion. Trainspotting is vital.
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![Trainspotting [1996]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5159MDM2CSL._SL160_.jpg)
