Addictive stuff

Rating: Null/10 (8 January 2001)

Hard to believe it's five years since Danny Boyle's classic film Trainspotting took the world by storm but while you ask yourself what has happened since it opened on March 8, 1996, just reflect on the movie's legacy for a minute.
Just about every firm in the UK borrowed its ad campaign; Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Jonny Lee Miller and Kelly MacDonald became huge stars while Boyle himself went on to make the sublime A Life Less Ordinary and current video release, The Beach.
As for the soundtrack? Iggy Pop, Leftfield, Blur and Pulp helped turn it into one of the biggest sellers of the year.
In case you didn't know it, the movie was based on a cult novel by Irvine Welsh who writes largely in broad Scots and makes an appearance as drug dealer, Mother Superior.
`He's called that on account of the length of his habit,' remarks Renton (McGregor). While the movie was seen by many sniping critics to be glorifying drug culture, what it actually did was far more clever than any `Just Say No' ad campaign by the cast of Grange Hill.
By taking the (at the time) radical viewpoint that the drug culture exists, the film-makers didn't judge. Instead, Trainspotting depicted the squalid lives of its inhabitants and the ultimately fatal consequences of being a heroin addict.
Boyle, producer Andrew MacDonald and writer John Hodge amazed the British film-making community when they made such a hit movie on home turf.
Even before their outstanding debut, Shallow Grave, was released, producer Scott (The Firm) Rudin was offering them $250,000 to make any big screen project they wanted.
Most people expected them to upstumps and set up camp in America, like so many film-types lured to the States by the big bucks.
The cash may be great in la la land but creative freedom? Not a chance. Had Trainspotting been shot across the pond, there's a good chance it would have been made as a comedy vehicle for Jim Carrey - or whoever else was big at the time. The drug element would have been removed completely and the addiction would have probably been something safe like chocolate or coffee.
As for the ambiguous title? Forget that.
Thankfully, Danny and company stayed put and delivered one of the best British films of the last decade. A biting, shocking satire which goes for the jugular and stays in the mind no matter how much you'd like to forget it.
The sight of a baby crawling along the ceiling of Renton's bedroom remains one of the most shocking dream sequences I've ever seen. Three days later it kept returning like an unwanted guest that just won't leave.
No movie is created in a vacuum and the Trainspotting crew borrowed heavily from another cult flick for their inspiration: A Clockwork Orange.
The near inaudible scene in the Volcano nightclub is almost a carbon copy of the Velocet Milk Bar from that Stanley Kubrick classic and in a fine in-joke, even features a track by Heaven 17 (who took their moniker from the same controversial movie.)
If you only see five minutes, don't miss Renton attempting to seduce Diane as his libido returns with a vengeance. Aside from boasting one of the best shots in the movie as they leave the club, it also features Kelly MacDonald delivering some delicious dialogue.