The Horrors Of Drug Use

Rating: 10/10 (19 October 2012)

Trainspotting is a British black comedy film directed by Danny Boyle based on the novel of the same title by Irvine Welsh, who played hapless drug dealer Mikey Forrester, and starring Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, Robert Carlyle and Kelly Macdonald. The story follows a group of heroin addicts in a late 1980's economically depressed area of Edinburgh and their passage through life. The Academy Award nominated screenplay, by John Hodge, was adapted from Welsh's novel. Beyond drug addiction, other concurrent themes in the film are exploration of the urban poverty and squalor in "culturally rich" Edinburgh.
Mark Renton, a young man with few prospects and fewer ambitions, lives in economically depressed Edinburgh. Like most of his friends, Renton is a heroin addict who loves the drug's blissful nothingness; financing his habit also provides excitement and challenges that his life otherwise lacks. Renton's two best friends are also junkies: Sick Boy, a snappy dresser obsessed with James Bond, and Spud, a guileless nerd who suggests Pee Wee Herman's debauched cousin. Renton and his pals also hang out with Begbie, a borderline psychotic who loathes junkies even though he drinks like a fish. After one too many brushes with the law, Renton kicks heroin and moves to London, where he finds a job, a flat, and something close to peace of mind. However, Sick Boy, Begbie, and Spud all arrive at his doorstep on the trail of a big score, leading Renton back into drugs and crime.
THE experience of watching Trainspotting -- the electric, nasty and slick descent into the milieu of young Scottish junkies -- is a little like speeding through the digestive tract of some voracious beast.It has been attacked as pro-drug and defended as anti-drug, but actually it is simply pragmatic. It knows that addiction leads to an unmanageable, exhausting, intensely uncomfortable daily routine, and it knows that only two things make it bearable.A brutal, often times funny, other times terrifying portrayal of drug addiction in Edinburgh. Not for the faint of heart, but well worth viewing as a realistic and entertaining reminder of the horrors of drug use.