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La critique de James Berardinelli (1)
Next to Independence Day, Trainspotting may be the most hyped motion picture of the summer. Miramax Films, the distributor that saturated the market with ads for The Crying Game in 1992- 93 and Pulp Fiction in '94, has struck again. Trainspotting, which is based on Irvine Welsh's cult novel and is directed by Shallow Grave helmsman Danny Boyle, became a smash hit in the UK during its run there. Miramax, hoping for a similar reaction on this side of the Atlantic, has been shouting from the rooftops, using big, splashy print ads and chaotic TV and theatrical spots to lure in their target audience. The danger is, of course, that Trainspotting's substance will get drowned by the marketing.

"I chose not to choose life. I chose to choose something else," says the film's narrator and main character, a twenty-something Edinburgh man named Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor), near the outset of Trainspotting. In rejecting the yuppie culture of a nuclear family, material possessions, a paying job, and dental insurance, Renton is rebelling, but this isn't just the usual disaffection of youth -- it's a deeper, more pervasive dissatisfaction with a culture he views as sick and stifling.

Renton's escape is through drugs -- primarily heroin, but really anything he can get his hands on. He's surrounded by his "buddies", a group of crooks, liars, and psychos who are even more twisted than he is. There's Spud (Ewan Bremner), a shy, inoffensive junkie; Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), a vicious, duplicitous con artist who's obsessed with Sean Connery; Tommy (Kevin McKidd), a "virtuous" young man fighting the temptation of heroin; and Begbie (Robert Carlyle), a nutcase who gets his thrills from beating up people.

Trainspotting is careful not to present a one-sided view of drug use. After all, why would anyone use the stuff if all it leads to is misery and unhappiness? In Renton's words, to get an idea of what it's like using heroin, "Take the best orgasm you've ever had, multiply by 1000, and you're still nowhere near it." There are no worries about the problems and concerns of everyday life, just where the next hit is going to come from. The giddiness of heroin addiction is well-illustrated during some of the film's early scenes, but it's a euphoria that gives way to tragedy.