Picks up

Rating: 10/10 (18 February 2000)

What starts out as a very good beginning slows down but nevertheless remains a satisfying first act. The movie takes a turn for the worst, however, with a very hollow and pointless second act, where nothing important, if anything at all, happens. But Danny Boyle and the Trainspotting crew are no fools. They don't let a film suck without doing something about it! The third act takes off and does its best to revive the sagging film, and you can't help but love Dicaprio's, uh, bonding time with nature. A very uneven film but all around an enjoyable two hours.
possible spoiler: My one gripe: the film suffers from the LA Confidential syndrome. There is a perfect semi-tragic and real place to end the film, but it was abandoned so the audience would not feel "isolated". We're not all conformists. We don't need to hear some Lilith Fair song about love and peace come on after a bunch of people got shot and killed. We don't need "happily ever after". We're big boys. I can understand that the filmmakers knew their target audience was young, so they wanted to have a nice ending with Leo smiling. Well I'm fifteen and I'm one of those people who saw Titanic 14 times with my girlfriend. I may be young, but I'm not stupid. I know when I'm being spoon-fed, and well, in a film that dives into the furthest depths of human insanity, I don't need to see Leo grinning over a crappy iMAC at an internet bar so we can all feel good about ourselves at the end of the day.