Trainspotting (1996)

UK93m, Colour
Director: Danny Boyle; Cast: Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle, Ewen Bremner, Kevin McKidd, Kelly Macdonald

Trainspotting is a bleak comedic coming-of-age style story based on the 1993 novel of the same name by Irvine Welsh. The movie follows the day-to-day lives of a group of heroin addicts and their daily labors to find enough money to maintain their drug habits. Filmed from the junkies’ viewpoint, their story is a direct and often explicit description of the highs and lows of their hopeless existence in an economically depressed part of Edinburgh during the 1980s. As the character Mark Renton, Ewan McGregor is brilliant as the film’s narrator and main character who repeatedly attempts free himself from the downward spiral of his drug-induced journey that conspires to lead him to an early grave. Both captivating and appalling, Trainspotting is a mesmerizing film experience which is aptly supported by a most memorable pop-punk soundtrack (Klaus Ming May 2011).