Movie #196: Trainspotting

Movie #: 196
Movie Title: Trainspotting
Year Released: 1996

Director: Danny Boyle
Notable Cast: Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, Robert Carlyle

Short Description: Renton, deeply immersed in the Edinburgh drug scene, tries to clean up and get out, despite the allure of the drugs and influence of friends. (IMDB.com)


Rank on the Top 100 Lists

AFI.com: N/A
IMDB.com: N/A
Ranker.com: #72
Lifed.com: N/A
Empire.com: N/A
FilmCrave.com: N/A
FlickChart.com: N/A



Date Watched: 7/25/2013

What I Liked: I thought Ewan McGregor was good and though his character really didn’t put in a ton of effort into getting out of the world of drug addiction like the movie description suggests, the movie did a decent job showing his attempt. The only hardcore consequence of drug addiction that the movie had involved the baby one of the supporting characters and thankfully the scene wasn’t sugarcoated, which would have taken away some seriously important substance from the story.

What I Disliked: For the first half of the movie I just didn’t care about what was going on. I think a good portion of that had to do with the actors being Scottish had having thick accents that made them hard to understand at times. The other half may be that I kept comparing the story and how it was told to Requiem for a Dream, which may not be fair if I’m trying to judge each movie individually, but considering that was the previous movie I watched, I couldn’t help myself. Supporting characters kept bouncing in and out of the movie and without much development for them, they were forgettable and I had little connection with them.

Grade: 2 out of 5 (Fair)
Rationale: The second of back to back drug related movies (out of 251 movies, what are the odds?), I found it to be less entertaining than Requiem for a Dream and the heavy accents really hurt it.