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| Trainspotting [1996] | ![Trainspotting [1996]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71DHBZD4FQL._SL160_.gif)
 enlarge | Director: Danny Boyle
Actors: Ewan Mcgregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin Mckidd, Robert Carlyle
Studio: Universal Pictures UK
Category: DVD
List Price: £19.99
Buy New: £8.00
You Save: £11.99 (60%)
Buy New/Used from £8.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  (45 reviews)
Sales Rank: 1369
Format: Anamorphic, Full Screen, Pal
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitles For The Hearing Impaired), English (Unknown), French (Unknown), Spanish (Unknown), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Dutch (Subtitled)
Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
Media: DVD
Running Time: 89 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Discs: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: 047 800 2
Model: 047 800 2
UPC: 044004780025
EAN: 0044004780025
ASIN: B00004R73L
Release Date: February 23, 1996
Theatrical Release Date: July 19, 1996
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 CHOOSE LIFE August 7, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
#1 BEST FILM OF 1996
Young filmmaker Danny Boyle's film adaptation of Irvine Welsh's incredible novel, about a band of social misfits that just so happen to be sleazy heroin junkies, is the movie that got me hooked on independent flicks. One late Friday night I was cruising through the movie channels on Satellite and I stumbled upon a channel called IFC (Independent Film Channel). On it there was this film 'Trainspotting'. I watched it and immediately fell in love with it. I never really saw anything quite like it, it was stylish, cool, depressing, dark and disturbing all at the same time. After this I got hooked on IFC channel, and if it wasn't for the smash U.K. hit 'Trainspotting', I might have never watched an independent film.
Following the novel surprisingly closely, 'Trainspotting' revolves around a band of friends. Most are heroin junkies, one is an alcoholic psycho and the other is actually a good guy. These friends play soccer together and hang out all the time. They are led by Mark Renton (played by Ewan McGregor - Star Wars, Moulin Rouge) the central character and narrator of this macabre yet intriguing tale. We watch him as he tries to get off heroin and how this effects his friends -- Spud (Ewen Bremner - Snatch., The Acid House) a silly, naive, never-hurt-a-fly kind of heroin addict who serves as the film's oaf; Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller - Dracula 2000, Hackers) a selfish, sneaky and manipulative heroin junkie obsessed with James Bond who Renton secretly despises; Tommy (Kevin McKidd - The Acid House) the only honest friend of Renton's who is drug and alcohol free; and Francis Begbie (Robert Carlyle - The Full Monty, Riff Raff) a deranged, alcoholic violent madman with a mean temper and a large knife. The story follows Renton's struggle to get off drugs and start a life while interacting with his friends and eventually arranging a drug deal with them at the end to strike it rich.
'Trainspotting' is a nearly perfect picture with extraordinary acting, directing and writing. The performances are nothing short of first-rate in 'Trainspotting'. Ewan McGregor gives perhaps his finest and most unfairly ignored screen performances as our hero and struggling heroin junkie. He plays the role with such authenticity and passion for the craft of acting you'd never think he wasn't a heroin junkie in real life. Ewen Bremner is funny as the film's idiot, but Jonny Lee Miller surprisingly gives an outstanding performance as Renton's slippery so-called friend. Kevin McKidd is good as Tommy and Kelly MacDonald does a fine job with her acting debut as Renton's underage lay who becomes kind of like a mentor to him as the film progresses. One of the absolute finest performances in this movie is by Robert Carlyle, most known as a British acting coach. It's hard to explain why he's so wonderful, but I'll try. He plays the bad guy in a way that it makes you uncomfortable and scared watching him. That takes talent and it's not easy to do for any actor. Danny Boyle provides us with breathtaking camera work and has some Tarantino-ish qualities, that makes him one of the most talented filmmakers working in the independent film industry. There is a scene in which the main character, Renton, is going through withdrawal and he has a hallucination of a friend's deceased infant child crawls up on his bedroom wall and spins his head all the way around in a kind of Linda Blair Exorcist style. It's a freaky scene but it's also a carefully layered and admirable scene that proves Danny Boyle's directing talents to be most impressive. John Hodge (who writes most of Boyle's films) does a phenomenal job capturing the material from Welsh's groundbreaking and provocative novel that should have won him the Oscar in the 1997 Academy Award ceremony. The cinematography is consistently amazing but the film editing is a tad choppy. But, that's not really something to get bent out of shape about, because the rest of the film is always engrossing especially the magnificent and extensive soundtrack including music from Blur, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop.
All in all, 'Trainspotting' is an astounding indie achievement from British filmmaker Danny Boyle who also did the highly successful indie romp 'Shallow Grave' starring Ewan McGregor and the major flop 'The Beach' starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Carlyle. If you've never seen 'Trainspotting' and have a very strong stomach and an urge to see something peculiar yet brilliant, be sure to rent it your next stop at the videostore. If you've seen it and liked it enough to purchase it, be sure to get the the 2-disc special edition DVD with some excellent extras including full-length audio commentary with some insightful information. 'Trainspotting' is the film that started my love with indie cinema. Be sure you don't miss it. Grade: A
 Cult Film of the 90's July 3, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This movie takes place in a time when club music replaced punk music as the sound of their generation. With an influential soundtrack this movie was destined for underground cult status.
This drug-themed movie is not for the faint of heart, certain scenes are disturbing and will likely offend.
Propelling Ewan McGregor into super stardom, this is arguable his best non-Hollywood work. Other co-stars have also proven themselves in other notable smaller movie projects.
The directing is superb. Enough said.
Essential for anyone living in Edinburgh May 14, 2007
0 out of 6 found this review helpful
I love this film, and think every aspect is great.
This may be because i live in edinburgh and enjoy the fact tht it's set here, but I still think its a must see film that evokes many ideas/thoughts and has a great plot.
'Moving on, the day you die'. October 15, 2006
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
Trainspotting is largely responsible for the revival of the British Film Industry and one the finest films of the 1990s. It is also one of my personal favourites.
Set in the underworld of Edinburgh, Renton and his 'so called friends'. Among them are Begbie (a psychopath), Tommy (too honest for his own good), Sickboy (Sean Connery enthusiast and utterly unreliable) and Spud (slimy loser). Renton is desperate to kick his addiction to heroin. But why would he want to choose life? His attempt to go straight goes through many twists and turns, with underage girls, scrapes with the law, re-addiction and even all the way to London, back to Edinburgh and then back again. Despite the horror of the life of the protagonists, the films ends or an uplifting high.
Among the best scenes in the film are (The Worst) toilet (in Scotland), Spud's moring-after-the-night-before disaster, the junkie limbo and Renton abandoning his 'so-called mates'. The final shot of Renton walking away over the Bridge with Born Slippy by Underworld playing is one of my favourites of all time.
Sick, twisted and funny, black comedy, with great acting by all, impressive directing by Danny Boyle and a wonderful soundtrack, Trainspotting is a great buy.
Choose a job, choose a family.....choose life. September 11, 2006
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
How can you not like a movie that features a shot of a dead baby crawling along a ceiling and rotating its head 180 degrees? If that doesn't scream 'fun' for the entire family, I don't know what does. Ha.
Anyhoo, the movies setting and subject matter were somewhat grim to put it mildly, but that didn't stop Trainspotting from becoming one of the top movies of the nineties, and having just watched it this morning I can safely state that it holds up well to this day. While I haven't read the Irvine Welsh novel on which this movie is based, I have read some of his other work (Porno, Filth), and the movie is a perfect distillation of his storytelling style-rapid-fire, filled with bawdy set pieces, characters living on the edge of acceptable society, and lots and lots of swear words.
It's also the kind of violent, genre-defying, and pop culture reference-laden movie, complete with way-cool soundtrack, that emerged with such force in the nineties and spawned so many imitations in this decade. For my money at least, this movie is a much more entertaining and convincing look at the world of heroin users than the interesting, but annoyingly depressing and pedantic, Requiem for a Dream, which came out a few years later to almost hyperbolic praise.
Trainspotting is a blunt, unapologetic look a life most of us can scarcely imagine, delivered with a combination of hilarity and horror that effortlessly intertwines these two extremes. It doesn't shrink from depicting the damage caused by heroin addiction, but it doesn't downplay all the fun of it either, which is what lends it so much of its gritty believability.
Trainspotting also marked the arrival on the international scene of director Danny Boyle, whose manic visual style would later serve him well on the slightly-less-brilliant 28 Days Later. Perhaps most impressively, it manages to contain one of my all-time top ten movie lines ("Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?"), my favorite nickname ever, fictional or otherwise ("We called him Mother Superior on account of the length of his habit"-brilliant), and more "Oh my God, did I just see that?" images than you'll find in fifty Hollywood blockbusters. In Boyle's hands the crazy imagery practically flies off the screen, be it human waste flying from a sheet across a room, the movie's protagonist climbing into Scotland's filthiest toilet to retrieve something he lost, or the hallucinatory, nightmarish haze of a cold-turkey withdrawal. The unrestrained depictions of sex, nudity, violence, drug use, and bodily functions make this a movie not to be viewed by the squeamish, but they perfectly suit its unflinching examination of the sordid goings-on in one country's drug-laden urban culture.
Outstanding. 8/10.
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