Funny, gritty, harrowing...and brilliant

Rating: 10/10 (31 January 2016)

Funny, gritty, harrowing...and brilliant.
Set in Edinburgh, Scotland, we follow the life of Renton (played by Ewen McGregor). Despite attempts to get clean, he is a heroin addict, as are his friends Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) and Spud (Ewen Bremner). We see their lives and how drugs affect them, their friends and their friendship. Meanwhile, another friend, Begbie (Robert Carlyle), is not a drug addict but gets his highs from confrontation and violence...
The second movie by Danny Boyle. His first, Shallow Grave, was excellent. This is even better.
Hilariously funny at times yet incredibly dark and gritty too. The drug scene and effects of drugs are certainly not glamorised - we why they do it, how difficult it is to break the addition, the short-term consequences...and the long-term ones. Not as confronting or as gritty as Requiem for a Dream or Christiane F in terms of showing the effects of drug abuse but still a fairly harrowing ordeal. Besides, those movies didn't have any humour in them..
Good plot, though the ending feels like too much of a soft landing. The conclusion would be the only negative, and it is a minor one, and really open to taste. I would have preferred a tougher ending, that's all.
Solid performances all round. This is the movie that launched the career of Ewen McGregor (though Shallow Grave readied it for takeoff).
Great soundtrack, with songs from Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Elastica, Pulp, Blur, New Order and Primal Scream, among others.
A great exploration of drug abuse and its consequences, humorously told.