Trainspotting (1996) Review: Addiction at Full Volume

Is Trainspotting worth watching?

Yes. Trainspotting is one of the most exhilarating British films ever made, a portrait of heroin addiction that is wildly funny, visually inventive and, when it needs to be, genuinely harrowing. Danny Boyle makes the film move like a pop single, yet never lets the energy hide the damage. The one caveat is that its gleeful style can be mistaken for celebration, and some viewers will find the cruelty and squalor hard to sit through.

What is Trainspotting about?

Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) is a young heroin user in Edinburgh, clever, sardonic and entirely aware that his life is going nowhere. He spends his days with a circle of friends who are a hazard in different ways: the hapless, sweet-natured Spud (Ewen Bremner), the sharp-tongued Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), the clean-living Tommy and the violent Begbie, who does not take drugs but is more dangerous than any of them. The film follows Renton as he tries, repeatedly and half-heartedly, to get clean, and as friendship and self-interest pull the group in opposite directions.

Trainspotting is a British film in English, adapted by John Hodge from Irvine Welsh’s novel and directed by Boyle. It runs a lean 93 minutes, and it became the defining British cult film of its decade.

Boyle’s style as a kind of high

The film’s energy is its argument. Boyle and his team cut to music, freeze frames, fantasy sequences and direct address, so that the early stretches feel as euphoric and reckless as the characters do. Renton’s opening monologue, set to Iggy Pop, sets the tone: a sneering rejection of ordinary ambition that is funny precisely because it is so seductive.

Then the style turns on its audience. The same visual invention that makes the good times feel electric is used to render withdrawal, overdose and squalor in grotesque, surreal detail. A notorious sequence in a filthy public toilet slides from revolting to dreamlike, and a later cold-turkey passage becomes a genuine horror film in miniature. Boyle never lectures; he simply shows the whole cycle, and lets the contrast do the work.

An ensemble that defined a generation

Ewan McGregor became a star here, and it is easy to see why. His Renton is charming, articulate and deeply selfish, and McGregor makes the narration feel like a conversation with someone who knows he is lying to you. Jonny Lee Miller gives Sick Boy a swaggering, pop-culture-obsessed wit, and Ewen Bremner makes Spud’s hopelessness both hilarious and heartbreaking.

Robert Carlyle’s Begbie is the film’s great comic terror, a man who treats every pub as a potential battlefield. Kelly Macdonald, in her debut, brings an unexpected sharpness to her scenes. Hodge’s screenplay, nominated for an Academy Award, keeps Welsh’s rich Scottish vernacular and dark humour while giving a sprawling book a clear dramatic line.

Where the swagger wears thin

For all its brilliance, the film’s structure is episodic, a consequence of adapting a novel built from loosely connected stories. Some sequences land harder than others, and the momentum dips in the later stretch as the story changes gear. The film’s attitude towards its characters can also feel slippery. It refuses to moralise, which is a strength, but the style is so intoxicating that the tragedy sometimes has to fight for attention.

Who should watch Trainspotting?

It is essential for anyone interested in British cinema, 1990s culture or films about addiction that avoid sermonising. Its soundtrack, featuring Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Blur and Underworld among others, is part of its legend. This is strictly adult viewing: explicit drug use, overdose, graphic scatological gags, sex, violence and relentless strong language, including a disturbing thread involving a baby that some viewers will find very distressing.

Worth pairing with:

• The Beach, Boyle’s next novel adaptation, for another story of young people chasing escape and finding something darker.
• Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, for dark comedy that likewise refuses to make its flawed characters easy to judge.
• More on the crime shelf, where Trainspotting sits among films about the people society writes off.

The verdict

Trainspotting remains a thrilling, funny and disturbing film whose style still feels fresh. Its episodic shape and ambivalent attitude will not suit everyone, but few films have captured both the pull and the cost of addiction with such force.

Rating: 4.5/5