What have you got to live for?

Rating: 10/10 (29 May 1999)

I find it highly amusing that many people have described this film as an "anti-drug" movie. If you wanna know why they're not forcing kids to watch this film, it's because its stance on drug use is fairly neutral, not the usual "zero tolerance" espoused by the "war" on drugs. I thought the point was that in heroin, Renton and his pals find a meaning for their lives. My Brit friends tell me that the term "trainspotting" is shorthand for "losers," and that is of course what these guys are. But as Renton explains throughout the film, aside from the pleasure of smack, it offers direction and purpose. When you're on skag, your life becomes very structured: fix, and then figure out how to get another fix. It's no different than people who go to law school or get business degrees: it provides them a means to structure their life. This is something that we all do; heroin in the mix just makes us sit up and notice. No one would want to see this if it concerned Mark Renton and his on-again, off-again relationship with the shady allure of investment banking.