Thank you for all your lovely comments. I'm taking an extended break from Ciao due to pressures from...
Thank you for all your lovely comments. I'm taking an extended break from Ciao due to pressures from work and home. Feel free to drop me from your COT if you're feeling neglected. You're all great writers and I'm gonna miss you! xxxx
Member since:14.05.2003
Reviews:54
Members who trust:25
Last night, my friend came over with a whole bunch of videos for us to watch. As she came over at half past seven, and Helen's bedtime is half past nine at the weekends, some of them had to be children-friendly. Which is why I wasted two and a half hours of my life watching the pile of crap that is Two Weeks Notice. Then I packed Helen off to bed, a little disgruntled, and we got down to the good stuff. I squealed with delight when Trainspotting was produced - I loved that film when I first saw it about five years ago and I knew I'd love it again. I already knew what my next op was going to be about.
The opening of the film is brilliant - possibly one of the best opening sequences ever in film history. Hmmm, well, maybe. It has Ewan McGreggor running to the juddering sounds of Iggy Pop, saying, 'Choose a life. Choose a job. Choose a family...' Even if you haven't seen the film you've probably seen this bit on any kind of film programme or Ewan McGreggor programme - its that famous. His running is interspersed with scenes from the film - pausing now and then on a still image of the five main characters - Renton (McGreggor), Spud (Ewan Bremner), Sickboy (Johnny Lee Miller...swoon...) Tommy (Kevin McKidd) and Begbie (Robert Carlyle). I really love this sequence - its fast paced, its edgy, and it totally sets the scene for the rest of the film.
The film - not the story, just the film - follows the highs and lows of those five young Scottish guys as they experiment with heroin, amphetamines and just about any other drug you care to name. That
is it, in its essence.
The story, however, is a little more complex. As I mentioned earlier, Ewan McGreggor starts off the film, he is the semi-narrator all the way through, he is, if you like, the antihero. We watch the film from his perspective - we recount his highs and lows, his heroin love affair. When we begin Renton's journey, he is struggling to give up on heroin. He goes through all the steps of quitting - locking himself in his room with cans of tomato and mushroom soup, porno, a television, and a bed. Then he decides he needs something to help him come down and calls over his trusty drug dealer who supplies him with two pills that are inserted up the, ahem, rectum. They give him diahorrea and send him into a hallocogenic state where he imagines he crawls down the toilet to search for the pills that he has, um, desposed of in the natural way. This point in the film was the moment when Helen decided to come downstairs. Shreiking 'bloody pause it!' at my friend, I scooped her up and ran up the stairs, tossed her in the bed, read her the quickest bedtime story in history, kissed her and her stuffed rabbit family, and dived back down into the living room to continue watching.
Renton's journey continues - through killing time with Sickboy in the park (Sickboy is also giving up, but simply to 'piss me off, show me how easy it is and generally demean my moral struggle'*), going clubbing, bedding 16-year-old schoolgirl Diane (Kelly MacDonald), watching his friends become adicts and finally almost overdosing on a time-killing shot of heroin ('Would sir like an apperterif?' 'No, I think I'll proceed directly to the shot of hard drugs'*).
With the help of his parents, Renton becomes clean and decides to move to London to make a go of his life and kill the boredom. But will the pull of Scotland, heroin and his friends become too much?
I said at the start of this review that I love this film, and so its not hard to guess that I'll be giving it a full five stars. However, I guess you are wondering why. The story is brilliant - I haven't read Irvine Welsh's book of the same name but sources tell me that its even better. But even that is overshadowed by the direction, the cinematography and especially the acting. Trainspotting still remains the most notable credit on Danny Boyle's CV, and unsurprisingly. Shallow Grave and 28 Days Later are good, maybe even great, and The Beach is interesting enough, but Trainspotting would be very hard to beat. Especially since he handles it with such original flair; the camera jumping about with style and inventiveness - most notably in the clubbing scenes and the aforementioned opening skit.
The acting and the characters are, in my opinion, what brings this film out of great to make it breathtaking. Ewan McGreggor as Renton is flawless, giving you a real character that manages to be a druggie and a shoplifter, and - in eyes of the law - a paedophile but retains your sympathies throughout. He is the lovable rogue, the sensitive one with the adorably tight trousers and cropped tops. Johnny Lee Miller's career didn't really set the world alight after Trainspotting in the way that everyone hoped, but I can't see why. As Sickboy he's ironic, funny, a bit of a w*nker but still horribly sexy - and still sympathetic. When he cries after his baby dies - in one of the most poignant and heart-wrenching scenes of the film - you really feel for him. He shows you, in its essence, what heroin can do to you, how it can rip you apart. Ewan Bremner's acting isn't really that notable, and for a while I struggled to work out why. Then I realised it. Its because his Spud is so perfectly and subtly played that he ceases to be an actor playing a role and is just there, a slightly stupid heroin addict who is frightened of everything. His pathetic stance - slumped shoulders, arms by his side - is not so much amusing as tragic. Robert Carlyle's Begbie is, the Full Monty aside, the best part of his career. 'Begbie doesn't do heroin - he does people'*, Renton tells us early on in the film, just before Begbie throws a pint glass over his shoulder to explode in a womans face. He runs down the stairs of the bar screaming 'Who the f*ck did that? Lets catch the f*cker!'* A rugby player screams 'Who the f*ck are you?'* and Begbie proceeds to kick him in the balls and break his nose, starting a hilarious fight. His volatile, foul-mouthed, insensitive sociopath is a work of art, expertly played by an actor whose had some slightly duff roles after this once in a lifetime one. A couple of examples of Begbie hilarity: When he's playing snooker, misses a shot and beats the cr*p out of some poor guy for 'deliberately' putting him off by loudly eating crisps. And when Spud goes to prison for a few months, Begbie shows his typical sensitivity by sayind 'Well, we all knew that c*nt was gonna get c*nted sometime.'*
All the characters iin Trainspotting are so excellent, so spot-on, because they are real. They are the kind of guys you'd meet down the pub (not that you'd want to). They aren't heroes, they aren't particularly sexy (well they are but its not intentional), they are raw, real guys that actually exist. And that is the secret of their excellence.
Combine this flawless direction, stunning cinematography, impeccable acting and real characters with a soundtrack that kiss every other soundtrack's butt (Iggy Pop, Blur and that imortal Underworld song), and you have one hell of a film.
* All these quotes are estimates - bear in mind that during the course of the film I had half a bottle of wine and so my memory might not be up to scratch.
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How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Production Year: 2004 - Drama - Director: Nick Cassavetes - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over, 12 years and over - Starring: Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling, Gena Rowlands
Production Year: 2003 - Drama - Director: Michael Winterbottom - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Tim Robbins, Samantha Morton, Om Puri, Jeanne Balibar
very very good I just reviewed this film wish I could do it as well as you!
Lancashire_Angel 01.11.2003 13:08
Great review. I loved this film, Sickboy and Begbie were my favourite characters, but then Robert Carlyle is one of my favourite actors.
cacalala1971 28.10.2003 13:23
Fab op. I liked the film, and I may have even loved it had I not read the book (which is fantastic if not alittle difficult tofollow because of the dialect). I've just read Porno (the 'follow up' to Trainspotting), and wouldn't be surprised if they didn't do a movie based on this one too. Wendy xxx
The film that effectively launched the star careers of Robert Carlyle, Ewan McGregor and ... more
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 wit...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
The film that effectively launched the star careers of Robert Carlyle, Ewan McGregor and ... more
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 wit...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
The film that effectively launched the star careers of Robert Carlyle, Ewan McGregor and ... more
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 wit...
Postage & Packaging: Check Site. Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
The film that effectively launched the star careers of Robert Carlyle, Ewan McGregor and ... more
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 wit...
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Advantages: Sublime and raw, a potently must-see eye-opener for the public. Disadvantages: Blotches of the disgusting capability of human anatomy - lots of faeces and the likes.
ikeaholic 11.07.2004 (11.07.2004)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Trainspotting (DVD)
Advantages: Sublime and raw, a potently must-see eye-opener for the public. Disadvantages: Blotches of the disgusting capability of human anatomy - lots of faeces and the likes.
ikeaholic 11.07.2004 (11.07.2004)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Trainspotting (DVD)
![Trainspotting [DVD] [1996]](http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/78551594.jpg "Trainspotting [DVD] [1996]")
![Trainspotting [DVD] [1996] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/116083763.jpg "Trainspotting [DVD] [1996] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]")
![Trainspotting [DVD] [1995]](http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/75200850.jpg "Trainspotting [DVD] [1995]")
Oct 4th, 2003
exceptional by (1%):
very helpful by (99%):
![Trainspotting [Special Edition]-DVD](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/103252867.jpg)
