It's very good but where were the trains?

Rating: 9/10 (23 July 2006)

The only criticism that can be levelled against "Trainspotting" is that there is only 1 train in it. I'm sure that there's a good reason why the film has this title despite its low train count but I'm too thick to "get" it.
I can only imagine what real trainspotters (that shrinking group of anoraks huddled at the end of railway station platforms with their timetables and cameras) make of a movie like this. They probably sit there in gleeful anticipation of a 2 hour-long treatise on the joys of sighting a Deltic in the sidings at Runcorn, then their faces drop as they realise they're watching a film about drugs.
Yes, "Trainspotting" is most definitely about drugs. Not only that, but about people who really enjoy taking drugs. The film's triumph is that it makes you sympathise with most of these thieving, scamming skag-heads.
Ewan MacGregor had already impressed us in another Danny Boyle film ("Shallow Grave") but his performance in "Trainspotting" as Mark "Rent Boy" Renton marked him out as a true movie star. No less impressive is Robert Carlyle as the psychopathic Begbie, and the whole cast never falls below the level of "Bloody Good" in the acting stakes. Even variable turns like Johhny "Sulky Pants" Lee Miller and Kevin "Carboard" McKidd put in credible performances in their supporting roles. Ewen Bremner's Spud is a stand-out character and this fine Welsh actor fills the screen in every scene where he's given space to do so. Even non-acting novelist Irvine Welsh turns in a good cameo as opium suppository peddler Mikey Forrester.
Comic, tragic, shocking, surreal, violent and pathetic (mostly all at the same time), "Trainspotting" is unique. Nobody had managed to tell a story about drug taking in quite this way before, and plenty of people have fallen flat on their faces trying to borrow from its success since its release. 10 years on, I can still quote a huge chunk of Renton's "Choose Life" opening monologue. Me and a lot of other people, I expect. I've never been into hard drugs, but "Trainspotting" gives me the feeling that I know more about heroin addiction and its effects than I really ought to.
Shame about the lack of trains, though.