Trainspotting

Plot synopsis:
Set in Edinburgh, the film begins with Mark Renton's (Ewan McGregor) narration as he and his friend, Spud (Ewen Bremner) sprint down Princes Street, pursued by security guards. Renton states that unlike people who 'choose life' (traditional families, materialistic possessions and financial stability), he decided live life as a heroin addict. The rest of Renton's close circle of football enthusiast friends are introduced: con-artist Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), clean-cut athlete Tommy (Kevin McKidd) and sociopath, Frank Begbie (Robert Carlyle). Sick Boy, Spud and Renton are all heroin addicts who spend their days shooting up in their drug dealer, Swanney's (Peter Mullan) flat. Swanney is often referred to as "The Mother Superior" by the guys.One day, Renton decides to give up heroin. Realizing he needs one last high to get him through the night, he buys opium rectal suppositories from dealer, Mikey Forrester (Irvine Welsh). After this final hit (and a nasty spell of diarrhea), Renton locks him into a cheap hotel room to endure the withdrawal. He later goes to a nightclub with the gang, noticing that his sex drive has returned with a vengeance. He eventually leaves with a young woman named Diane (Kelly Macdonald). After having sex together, Diane refuses to sleep in the same room as Renton and forces him to sleep in the hallway on a sofa. In the morning, Renton realizes that Diane is in fact a 15 year old schoolgirl and the flatmates sitting around the breakfast table are in fact, her parents. Horrified, Renton tries to shake off the incident but remains friends with Diane, who threatens to tell the police that Renton had sex with her despite being underage.Tommy is dumped by his girlfriend Lizzy (Pauline Lynch) after a string of events unintentionally initially started by Renton. Renton had previously borrowed a sex tape of Tommy & Lizzy, without their consent, hiding it in the box of a football tape. Lizzy angrily believes that Tommy had returned the tape to the video store. Sick Boy, Spud and Renton decide to use heroin again and a broken-hearted Tommy asks to try it to see why they like it so much, despite Renton's reluctance.One day during a heroin-induced stupor, the gang are violently interrupted by Allison (a fellow heroin addict) who has discovered that her infant child, Dawn has died from neglect. All are shell-shocked, especially Sick Boy who is implied to be the baby's father.Renton and Spud are later caught stealing from a book shop and are pursued by security guards, as seen in the beginning of the film. Due to prior convictions, Spud is sent to prison whereas Renton is put on a Drug Intervention Programme and given methadone. Despite support from friends and family, Renton becomes increasingly bored and depressed and escapes to Swanney's flat where he takes a particularly strong hit and nearly dies. Renton's parents lock him in his room so he can beat his addiction cold turkey. As Renton lies in bed going through severe withdrawal symptoms, he hallucinates that Diane is singing to him, friends are giving him advice and Allison's dead baby is crawling on the ceiling. The hallucination sequence is intercut with weird, imagined scenes from a TV game show, with Dale Winton asking Renton's parents questions about HIV. Renton is finally awoken from his nightmares and is told by his parents that he needs to get tested. Despite years of sharing syringes with other drug addicts, Renton's test comes back negative.Clean of heroin, Renton decides to visit Tommy who, by now, is lost in his heroin addiction and has contracted HIV. He's living in a filthy flat. On Diane's advice, Renton moves to London and gets a job as a property letting agent. He begins enjoying his new life of sobriety but it's short-lived after Begbie's involved in an armed robbery. He turns up at Renton's flat, asking for a place to hide out. Sick Boy, who now sees himself as a well-connected pimp and drug pusher, also shows up on Renton's doorstep. Renton's 'friends' make his life miserable, stealing from him and trashing his flat. Seeking to rid himself of them, Renton gives them a flat he's responsible for which they use as a base to commit theft, however, Renton doesn't rent it to them and they live there as squatters. The three soon learn of Tommy's death due to toxoplasmosis and travel back to Edinburgh for his funeral.Back home, they meet Spud who's been released from prison. Sick Boy suggests a dangerous but profitable heroin transaction. Sick Boy needs Renton's help to supply half of the initial £4,000 supply. After the purchase, Renton checks the purity by injection. The four then sell the drugs to the dealer for £16,000. They all go to a pub to celebrate, all them friendlier and happier than they usually are, and discuss their plans to spend the money. Renton suggests to Spud that they steal the money and run as Begbie & Sick Boy get drinks in. Spud is too scared of Begbie to consider it. Renton believes that neither Begbie nor Sick Boy deserve the money. As Begbie heads back to the table with another round of pints he bumps into another patron and spills much of the beer he bought. When the man apologizes, Begbie turns violent and smashes the man's face with one of the glasses. As he moves in to cut the man with a knife, he slashes Spud's hand. The incident is enough for Renton to decide to later steal the money since he feels he can't relate to either Begbie or Sick Boy any longer.Early in the morning, Renton wakes up before anyone else and takes the money from Begbie, leaving quietly. Spud sees him leave but says nothing; Renton gives him an affirmative nod. After Begbie discovers the money has gone, he trashes the hotel room in a violent rage that alerts the police, presumably leading to his arrest.Renton travels to London and vows to live the traditional, stable life he talked about in the beginning of the film. In voiceover, he talks about how Sick Boy would have stolen the money from everyone if he'd thought to do it first. He does feel some remorse for leaving Spud behind and leaves him £2,000 in the locker where he'd been hiding his passport. In the final scene, Spud retrieves the money Renton left for him.

Tags: dark, comedy, adult comedy, bleak, violence, cult, psychedelic, tragedy, revenge

Review:
'Trainspotting' is as hilarious as it is deeply disturbing, but most importantly (and unlike many other films concerned with addiction) it's one hell of an entertaining flick and doesn't drag for a second.We all know drugs are bad.
'Trainspotting' is the first movie I remember watching that actually conveyed that seductive quality of drugs and managed to honestly portray the reckless, hedonistic lifestyle a part of my generation - the so called "Generation X" - fell victim to.
And with the rapid pace of its plot, that's quite a bit of ground to cover.Though a great deal of the picture's brilliance is derived from director Danny Boyle's consistent rejection of typical cinematic techniques, the most satisfying and _best_ aspect of _Trainspotting_ is that Boyle creates a film that is neither pro-drug or anti-drug.
And Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, and Robert Carlyle bring a remarkable compassion and depth to their portrayals of characters that could have easily lapsed into cliche.Despite its sheer brilliance, _Trainspotting_ is not a film that's easy to watch.
Though the viewer will be mortified by some of the things that happen onscreen-- the well-documented dive into Scotland's most vile public toilet, for example-- these scenes all make _perfect sense_ within the context of a masterfully told story.In order to notice all of the subtlety that also exists in _Trainspotting_, repeat viewings are necessary, primarily to reduce some of the most powerful shocks ever-so-slightly, though their effects are never lost entirely.
This film became almost a cultural phenomenon as soon as it was released in Britain in February 1996.Adapted from the first (and best) book by Irvine Welsh, the film shows the lives of a group of Edinburgh heroin addicts.The film is a black comedy, at times hilarious, tragic, surreal, brutal and uplifting.
Meanwhile his friends are as messed up as he is, whether it be Spud's pathetic addiction, Begbie's violent rages or the fact that he is sleeping with a girl who still goes to school.When it came out this film was very hyped, the poster became a must-have on every student's bedroom wall and the media went nuts over it's supposed glamorisation of drug use.
True, it does show this downside in a stylish and funny way but there is no question that the film is promoting drug use in any sense.Too often I see films that are style over substance; Trainspotting gets it just perfect, stylish but not at the expense of dialogue, character or film.
While not all their characters are well developed, they do all give good accounts of themselves, whether it is comic or showing the effects of heroin on their lives.Overall this is a great film that is refreshing to see now without all the `cult student cool' hype or media feeding frenzy over it's supposed pro-drug approach.
This film is nothing more- or less- than one of the most effective and perfect artistic works ever committed to celluloid.The film follows the lives of a group of drug attics in Scotland in the late 1980's but is constructed less as a conventional narrative and more as a series of vignettes connected by characters and set to the film's dazzling soundtrack (the fact that I mention the scenes being 'set' to the soundtrack is proof of its importance in this particular film).
It's about a group of heroin addicts (led by Ewan McGregor's Renton) in Scotland who can't seem to live past their addiction...everything centers around drugs."Trainspotting" was condemned for promoting drug use, but I agree with fellow reviewer Bob the Moo who claims this was a misinterpretation on the media's behalf - yeah, it may show drugs as being "funny" at times (like Renton's wacky hallucination) but it certainly doesn't glamorize them.
And that is the tone of the film throughout, as characters continually talk nonsence and sail through the lives they have chosen, making very little progress, but instead drifting downwards until an opportunity presents itself to change their ways, where upon Renton, Ewan McGregor, must make a choice between his own life or his friends.
And B) A joke not featured in the film, but two of the characters go to a disused train station to buy drugs and say they are going "trainspotting".Ewan McGregor stars as Mark Renton, a performance that put him on the map, a man who spends; or wastes, most of his time taking drugs with his friends in one of their apartments.
He battles the strain and the influences of his mates; including Sick Boy (Johnny Lee Miller) a man who stops at nothing to take all, Spud (Ewen Bremner) a fast-paced anxious performance and Francis Begbie (Robert Carylye) a frighteningly intense character who is possibly my favourite of all-time; and Renton's sex life.Vibrant colour is used to exaggerate the actions to intensify the imagery on screen.
Danny Boyle did a excellent job of directing a movie based on Irvine Welsh's bestselling novel about desperate and hopeless Scottish heroin addicts.
As an ex-drug abuser myself, I find solace in watching fictional characters struggle with an affliction that was once part of my own life, and there's a sort of therapy involved there that seems to make one feel as if someone, even a fictional someone, at least understands the pain an addict goes through.
Sure, the message is often bleak and depressing, but at least it's not contributing to the lie that mainstream movies try to sell, where everything is cute, life is wonderful, the bad guys always get punished, and any conflict is wrapped up with a nice little bow in the end.With that being said, I went into "Trainspotting" fully prepared to feast on the dark nature of the film and find myself immersed in a cast of characters that I could relate to.
But as it stands, we never get a glimpse of what life was like -before- these characters were all on drugs, and to me that leaves a bit of a void.And for however "dark" one may think the film is, I personally didn't find it all that bleak.
"Requiem for a Dream" (my personal favorite movie about drug addiction of all time) makes this look somewhat childish in comparison.
I may only be young but not many films can effect me like 'Trainspotting'.It is able to pull you into the lives of the characters and makes you empathetic to their feelings while still in-keeping with Boyles contemporary look and style of film making.Its give you a different look about being Scottish which many of my friends have pointed out.Ewan Mc Gregor shows his best acting skills he shows that he has an amazing way of keeping you watching.He has proved himself a skilled actor and has contributed greatly to the British film industry.We are thankful.Its a film i can watch over and over again and still smile at the end.NOt one to miss.A must see!!.
Trainspotting is the story of a humor, violence, goofiness, abuse, friendship and sadness in heroin-addicted Scotland.It's a really vulgar film, with lots of disgusting scatological humor, pointless violence, and the pain of a life on heroin.But it's very well done, with a snappy, realistic script, lots of genuinely funny moments, some truly moving and sad scenes about this horrible existence, and, in the end, many important things to say.I ended up liking this movie, even with the harshness of some of the scenes.
We follow them as they deal with their lives, surprisingly normal personal life like girlfriend and the things they will go through to keep their sordid habit afloat.Danny Boyle, never portrays the heroin addiction of these characters as horrific, like life it is much more complicated than that.
In the meanest, wittiest way, Trainspotting said "bollocks" to Britpop - in fact, it said "bollocks" to every fad and fashion going - and so it became immortal.Welsh's novel is, like many of his works, essentially a series of short stories bound together by a group of amiable, self-centred protagonists who share a common interest in the procurement of a life-affirming experience - in this case heroin.
By using over-the-top visuals (the sequence with the dead infant in the crib is one that I won't be able to shake for sometime) and a rapid MTV music video style editing, Boyle makes the film visually fascinating while showing the truth behind the life of the average drug addict.If I have a problem with the film it's that it really doesn't go far enough.
At around the 65 minute mark, you really come into a full opinion of who he is and how much control he does (or doesn't) have over himself, his life and his addiction.One of the main reasons Trainspotting excels at being such a disturbing film is that it doesn't back down at the thought of having to push the envelope and employ some abstract ideas in order to truly get a message across.
I've seen a lot of films that are either pro or most of the time anti-drugs, this film is neither.The film makers just want to tell a simple story of a junkie, Renton, played very well by Ewan McGregor, who struggled to get out from Glasgow's drug scene and in the process fighting the gravitational pull of his friends and the drug itself.
Looking at this movie more than ten year later do your realize that it was very bad them but you didn't dare to say so because everybody was raving about it.I didn't like it and I don't like now, it is a complete lie and full of nonsense, specially the way the main character goes into heroin and cleans himself...
But why would I want to do a thing like that?" Even if you haven't seen Trainspotting, you'll be aware of the opening lines of Danny Boyle's 1996 masterpiece, and those opening lines are a pure reflection of whats going to happen and why you should avoid doing whats been done in the whole movie, if you want the option to "Choose Life.
And even if people say this lack of identity originality is the point of the movie—which it's not—then I'll say back, Brent Easton Ellis' novel Less Than Zero did that exact thing ten years before this movie came out and seven years before Welsh's book came out, and it did it infinitely better and more realistically than either one.If you liked Trainspotting, I pity you.2/10.
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.
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.
The main character of Renton,is a good example for the people who are addicted to it or people who are thinking to start it.But this film certainly doesn't deserve high points from IMDb and I didn't understand why the commentors are so interested in this film.The thing that interests me is that home life of Englih people is so disgusting.As a result of these factors,I can't find remarkable scenes or a theme to comment....
It's an absurd and weird journey, that has become a cult-classic ever since it released.'Trainspotting' based on the novel of the same name by Irvine Welsh, is about a group of heroin addicts in a late 1980s economically depressed area of Edinburgh and their passage through life.Danny Boyle shows Drugs throughout in this 91-minute long feature.
Now that "Slumdog Millionaire" is such a sensation, I'm afraid we have more Boyle to look forward to, even though every movie the man has made has been crap ("Sunshine" anyone?)"Trainspotting" is an unpleasant film about unpleasant people doing drugs, being criminals, trying to avoid the responsibilities that come with growing up and being an adult.
But the movie in a great sense is about the attempts of one main character to go straight and "choose life", but his 4 dastardly friends end up making that very, very difficult.It starts in Edinburgh, moves to London, then back to Edinburgh.
I guess I left those days behind...Now, on the other hand, if you want a glimpse of the low-rent, depressing, hopelessness and anger-inducing life of everyday heroin addicts in Scotland who rail against the establishment, then this is the movie for you.Other reviewers have given good synopses and their own critiques of the film so I won't need to repeat them.
With its lucidly grotesque subject matter, jarring imagery, darkly convulsive comedy, relentless pacing, and wholly pungent, disillusioned outlook on 90's Scottish society and consumer-culture, Trainspotting manages to shock and disturb as much as it entertains, providing insight on the woeful realities of the impoverished drug lifestyle and consequential addictions that ostensibly functions as an alternative to the banalities of consumerism that ultimately fails in every possible way.The startlingly well-grounded performances are brought to life with thanks to a gritty script and sharp (albeit thickly-accented) dialogue.
I can honestly say that I wasn't thrilled at the two dick shots in the movie and a few scenes were pretty disgusting, but I think they were presented for the purpose of showing how disgusting and desperate the main characters lifestyle was.In comparison to other movies about drugs, I believe that Trainspotting has a much better message or at least presents the story in way that shows the consequences of drug use.
This movie on the other hand shows good and bad side of drugs and it is also very optimistic because it shows that even if you are addicted, this isn't the end of the world, you still can come back to a normal life if you really try.
In what can be described as one of the best movies to come out of Britain, Danny Boyle directed a film which will stand on its own for quite a long time.
My opinion-."Trainspotting" is a movie by Danny Boyle, adapted by Irvine Welsh's best-seller in 1993, describing the adventures of a group of young Scottish heroin addicts and it was this movie that launched the career of The actor Ewan McGregor, who takes the lead.
"Trainspotting" – The knockabout 1996 heroin-addict ensemble piece which put Danny Boyle and Ewan McGregor on the map, immortalised Irvine Welsh's bestselling novel and proved a shot in the arm for 1990's British Cinema and it's greatest creation.It is the 1996 British black comedy-drama film which starred Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, Robert Carlyle, and Kelly Macdonald.
In this movie we look at life with drug addict Mark Renton eyes and how he sees everything.
Trainspotting, directed by Danny Boyle, uses different cinematic techniques, music, and comedic timing every five minutes, if it were any other film the movie would have been completely incoherent, but the varying use of techniques does not hinder the movie's pacing but instead establishes the tone of the chaotic life of a heroin addict.
I'll start off by saying that this is my favourite film of all time, so if you're looking for anything other than reasons to watch it, you should probably move on.Though the subject matter of 'Trainspotting' is dark, gritty, and somewhat disgusting, the movie itself is uniquely charming.
But why would anyone want to do a thing like that?"I have no idea what Trainspotting actually means, but this 1996 Danny Boyle film is truly an entertaining cinematic experience.
The energetic 80's soundtrack, the great performances from McGregor, Miller, Carlyle, Bremner, and McKidd, the clever screenplay adaptation by John Hodge from Welsh's novel, and the visual style that Boyle uses is what have turned Trainspotting into such a classic and memorable film.
Danny Boyle's Trainspotting is a film about the seeming everyday life of the average heroin addict in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Really great performances all round, particularly from; Ewan McGregor as Renton, Ewen Bremner as Spud, Jonny Lee Miller as Sick Boy, Kevin McKidd as Tommy and Robert Carlyle as the psycho, Begbie.There are scenes in this film that are quite hard to watch but I believe it is all included to show just how real the effects of drug addiction are.
While watching this movie you will learn a lot about the life of drug addicts.
Depicts the life of a drug addict and his struggle plus his good times with heroine.