From Chaos Comes Clarity

Rating: Null/10 (30 September 2005)

The movie "Train Spotting" is an anti-establishment film that plunges into the reality of a serious drug addiction. The film takes its name from the leisure activity of so many Scottish youth, identifying trains and having the schedules memorized. It is a fitting metaphor for heroin addiction, something that kills time but achieves absolutely nothing. "I chose not to choose life. I chose to choose something else," says the film's narrator and main character, Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor). What Renton chose was heroin. The story is about where it took him.
The film starts out with Renton and his four friends living in a crazy life of criminal activity and not caring about anything. The life style that is depicted early in the movie is very amusing and seems fun but when things start to go sour the bitter truth arises. When one of his friends' babies dies from neglect, Renton starts to come to grip with his problem. Although there isn't much of a story to the film, the final act does try to set up what will probably be Renton and the gang's final "scam." When Renton tries to go straight, he has trouble doing so. Everyone he associates with begins to hit rock bottom, Renton himself hit rock bottom when he overdoses on heroin. Broken from his addiction, he lets his family help him recover from the terrible affliction. He finally sees the destructive nature of his addiction and the friends he lost and of the lives drugs destroyed.
I liked the move and its one-sided view on drug use. It depicts the chaotic life style well and the film deserves two thumbs up. One thing I did not enjoy about the movie was its lack of a solid story and how fast paced it is. When I watched it I became confused with what was going on, which lead me to the similarity of the chaotic nature in the film, to the real life experience of an addiction. I also think that the movies' major flaw is its' eagerness addresses too many issues through its use of clever symbolism. I enjoyed this film because i saw it as being very real and I could relate to the ideas the director was trying to imply.