Trainspotting

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

It would be hard to imagine a movie about drugs, depravity, and all-around bad behavior more electrifying than Trainspotting.

Film.com Keith Simanton

Two of the fastest, most involving hours in recent film.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Heroin may be a downer, but Trainspotting definitely takes you up…a series of roaring, provocative, outrageous highs. [26 July 1996, Friday, p.C]

Film.com Susan Rathke

Darkly humorous, intensely graphic.

San Francisco Examiner Barry Walters

Extraordinary, entertaining cinema.

Film.com Shannon Gee

Keeps you engaged in this story of a memorable anti-hero for our times.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

The most original, daring, thrilling movie to be released this year, Trainspotting is one of those occasional, astonishing triumphs of risk and imagination that gets you excited about what smart people, pushing themselves and the medium, can accomplish in the movies.

Slate Michael Wood

A desolate, fast, funny, scary film, and it takes more risks than any recent film.

Time Richard Corliss

The film is about joy--in conniving and surviving, in connecting with audiences, in its own fizzy, jizzy style.

Variety Derek Elley

Scabrous, brutal and hip, Trainspotting is a "Clockwork Orange" for the '90s.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Exuberant and pitiless, profane yet eloquent, flush with the ability to create laughter out of unspeakable situations, Trainspotting is a drop-dead look at a dead-end lifestyle that has all the strength of its considerable contradictions.

TNT RoughCut Jason Puskar

Irresistibly bleak appeal.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

The on-target performances, along with the unceasing barrage of popular music and daring narrative gambles, combine to make Trainspotting one of the grand movie rushes of 1996.

USA Today Mike Clark

A movie that rudely flings feces at the breakfast table isn't for everyone.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

There's nothing new or unique about the story, but it is presented in a manner that reinforces its immediacy and impact.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

A little like speeding through the digestive tract of some voracious beast. There's bite, acid, digestive churning and an expulsive conclusion. If the metaphor seems unsavoury, well, wait until you see the film.

Mr. Showbiz F. X. Feeney

It's a disturbing film in the best sense.

Film.com John Hartl

Ewan McGregor in a raw, funny, star-making performance.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

A must-see.

Film.com Tom Keogh

A surprisingly vital film.

Newsweek John Leland

Artfully ambivalent, Danny Boyle's film, twists with a junkie's logic. It does not preach; it wallows in the pain and, more daringly, in the pleasure.

Dallas Observer Arnold Wayne Jones

Creates a sense of understanding that crystallizes the essence of the drug subculture with startling clarity.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

The stylish irreverence of Trainspotting mimics that drug high and delivers its own potent kick.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Darkly comic tone of heroin-addiction film sets it apart

Baltimore Sun Ann Hornaday

Isn't a noble story, or even a cautionary one: It just feels pretty painfully real.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It uses a colorful vocabulary, it contains a lot of energy, it elevates its miserable heroes to the status of icons (in their own eyes, that is).

TV Guide Frank Lovece

Captures the way drug addiction gives structure and purpose to aimless lives, and evokes the breathtaking rapture of a fix. All this and a happy ending, too.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

A new voyeurism has arisen in the last two decades or so, and Trainspotting caters to it--an addiction to addiction-watching. [August 19, 1996]

Washington Post Desson Thomson

The story, such as it is, follows Renton's inconsistent attempts to kick his habit.