Amazon.co.uk Review
The film that effectively launched the star careers of Robert Carlyle, Ewan McGregor and Jonny Lee Miller,
Trainspotting 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, it conspires to be at once a hip youth flick and a grim cautionary fable.
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 choice 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
DVD Description
Disc One
Uncut main Feature
Nine Deleted Scenes (with director commentary)
Feature Commentary
The Beginning
Disc Two
Retrospective:
The Look of the Film Now and Then
The Sound of the Film Now and Then
Interviews with Danny Boyle director, Andrew MacDonald producer and John Hodge writer
Origins - Interview with Irvin Welsh
Behind the Needle
Trainspotting at the Cannes Film Festival: Cannes Snapshot and Voxpops
Origional Cinematic Trailer
Cast and Crew Biographies
Gallery
Anamorphic Widescreen: 1.85.1 Dolby Digital 5.1 Subtitles: English
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