Stars: Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, Robert Carlyle, Kelly MacDonald, Ewen Bremner

Director: Danny Boyle

Summary: Cult filmmaker Danny Boyle (28 DAYS LATER) directs this quintessentially British film that focus on a group of heroin addicts in Edinburgh. Features star turns from the then-unknown Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller and Robert Carlysle, and a terrific, chart-topping soundtrack that includes tracks by Pulp, Blur and Iggy Pop.

A kinetic, intimate look inside the subculture of heroin abuse, this acclaimed adaptation of Irvine Welsh's novel follows the misadventures of Renton (Ewan McGregor), a brash twenty-something Edinburgh junkie, and his nihilistic chums Spud (Ewen Bremner), Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), Tommy (Kevin McKidd), and Begbie (Robert Carlyle). Alternately comical and dark, the film ultimately comes down to Renton's choice between self-destruction or life. The stellar soundtrack should not be missed.

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The film that effectively launched the star careers of Robert Carlyle, Ewan McGregor and Jonny Lee Miller is a hard, barbed picaresque, culled from the bestseller by Irvine Welsh and thrown down against the heroin hinterlands of Edinburgh. Directed with abandon by Danny Boyle, Trainspottingconspires to be at once a hip youth flick and a grim cautionary fable. Released on an unsuspecting public in 1996, the picture struck a chord with audiences worldwide and became adopted as an instant symbol of a booming British rave culture (an irony, given the characters' main drug of choice is heroin not ecstasy).

McGregor, Lee Miller and Ewen Bremner play a slouching trio of Scottish junkies; Carlyle their narcotic-eschewing but hard-drinking and generally psychotic mate Begbie. In Boyle's hands, their lives unfold in a rush of euphoric highs, blow-out overdoses and agonising withdrawals (all cued to a vogueish pop soundtrack). Throughout it all, John Hodge's screenplay strikes a delicate balance between acknowledging the inherent pleasures of drug use and spotlighting its eventual consequences. In Trainspotting's world view, it all comes down to a question of choices--between the dangerous Day-Glo highs of the addict and the grey, grinding consumerism of the everyday Joe. "Choose life", quips the film's narrator (McGregor) in a monologue that was to become a mantra. "Choose a job, choose a starter home... But why would anyone want to do a thing like that?" Ultimately, Trainspotting's wised-up, dead-beat inhabitants reject mainstream society in favour of a headlong rush to destruction. It makes for an exhilarating, energised and frequently terrifying trip that blazes with more energy and passion than a thousand more ostensibly life-embracing movies. --Xan Brooks

Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Year:	1995
Release Date:	June 20, 2005
Runtime:	89 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	047 800 2
Keywords:	General, Drama, Trainspotting
Genre:	Drama