Choose life, choose a big television, choose to watch this movie...

Rating: 10/10 (12 September 2005)

The best British film of the '90s? That's right, Trainspotting is a hilarious, dark, weird and sometimes painful masterpiece. Based on Irvine Welsh's cult novel (Welsh appears as a dealer, by the way), it's one of the most compelling, entertaining and shocking looks at the effect drugs can have on people, and it's to director Danny Boyle's eternal credit that he doesn't depict just one side of the story: we get to see what these people enjoy about getting high, so that we can, if not forgive them, at least understand them.
The film takes place in Edinburgh, Scotland, home to five youngsters who hang out and cause trouble together. The team's "moral" leader, not to mention the movie's narrator, is Mark Renton (Ewan Mcgregor, in a career-defining role), who knows he's slowly ruining his life and tries to kick the habit several times. That he'd rather have sex with an underage girl (Kelly MacDonald) than give his decision any serious thought doesn't speak very well on his part. His mates, in sanity order, are Tommy (Kevin McKidd), who's sane enough to stay away from heroin (he shoots DIY sex tapes instead), Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), a James Bond-obsessed pervert (ironic, since the actor's grandfather, Bernard Lee, played M in the Connery and Moore era), Spud (Ewen Bremner), so lost in an everlasting high he can't speak properly, and Begbie (Robert Carlyle), whose personal drug consists of beating up people, especially when they're not Scottish.
What gives the film a bit more edge compared to most dramas about drug addicts is its unrelented, anarchic energy, evident from the beginning, when Renton and Spud are running away from the police, with Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life" blaring on the soundtrack and the narration imposing itself with the famous "Choose life" monologue, arguably the best sample of junky philosophy in the entire movie. Boyle never stops for one second, but continues to jump between funny and tragic, real and imaginary, cheeky and serious, using Scorsese-worthy camera angles and movements and state-of-the-art dream sequences to grant us a rare view of the addict's mind and soul.
The double aspect is present in the performances as well: Miller and Bremner play it for laughs most of the time, therefore lightening the tone whenever Carlyle's madness or other external events threaten to make the picture too bleak. And then there's McGregor, the one caught in the middle between hilarity and darkness (literally, in the case of the terrifying overdose scene), who tells the story with the right combination of earnestness and irony.
Trainspotting isn't a lecture: it shows the "fun" part of doing drugs (the toilet dive) and the downside of it. It's not Ken Loach, it's Danny Boyle, which means it's one of the coolest, edgiest pictures of the '90s. A masterwork. It's also got the catchiest music of the decade, after Pulp Fiction, that is.