Trainspotting

Trainspotting (1996)
Director: Danny Boyle
Actors: Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Robert Carlyle

Synopsis: Edinburgh junkie, Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor), tries desperately to kick his heroin habit, but comes up against innumerable obstacles: namely his motley array of questionable friends, the addiction itself, and a general apathy about ‘getting ahead’ in life.

Review: Trainspotting was the cult movie of my late teenage years: its iconic poster adorned the walls of countless dorm rooms and scuzzy student flats, and it acted as a cinematic companion to the similar ‘cool-but-mainstream’ dichotomy of Britpop that was sweeping through the country at the same time.

Well, over a decade on, it’s really interesting to revisit the film – one I can recall having viewed only once very hazily around the time of its release – and unpick its legacy away from the hyperbolic public and critical reception it initially received.  Thus, in retrospect, Trainspotting’s punky, anti-bourgeois sloganeering (‘Get a job….Choose Life’) almost seems a touch quaint and passé, treading on very similar ground to the cinematic trail blazed by Quentin Tarantino, and the literary works of Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk. Some of the pop cultural dialogue given to Sick Boy, for example, isn’t really a touch on loosely similar scenes in Pulp Fiction, and its ironic juxtaposition to the severity of the on-screen drug taking is a touch obvious.

That said, what really transmits and stands the test of time with Trainspotting is that it’s a great production, and, like the work of some sort of maverick theatre troupe, it’s all carried off with a real concentric, anarchic verve. It’s phenomenally well acted by all the performers, but Danny Boyle deserves particular credit for imagining the story so wittily. It’s a cleverly narrated tale, and Boyle never lets the story rest on its laurels at any point – mirroring perhaps the zany pressure Renton affects over his own attempts to quit drugs. There are smart touches where Renton’s voiceover will suddenly merge into one of the characters carrying out the described action, and the ‘cold turkey’ sequence, plus the opening montage where all the players and their ‘special’ personalities are revealed in a shambolic 5-a-side match, are absolute classics.

Yes, perhaps Boyle allows himself to get bogged down in an unnecessary third act genre detour where Renton and associates get involved in a London drugs sting. But even then, those scenes are an interesting throwback to what the capital looked like in that little window post-Thatcher just before the booming, globalist Blair years arrived. (June 2014)