Danny Boyle’s 1996 film “Trainspotting”, whose 4K remastered version was released in South Korean theaters on this Wednesday, looks into the seedy lifestyle of a bunch of different young addicts. While this is certainly not so pleasant to watch, the movie illustrates its story and characters with considerable style, spirit, and humor, and it is alternatively electrifying and insightful on the whole.
The center of the movie is Mark “Rent Boy” Renton (Ewan McGregor), a young addict living in Edinburgh, UK. After the opening scene which is incidentally one of the most memorable moments in the film, his sardonic narration functions as a guide which lets us into the carefree lifestyle of him and his several other fellow junkies, and we observe more of how their daily life often swings back and forth between only two modes. Whenever they inject a dose of heroin into themselves, everything seems fine and well to them as they get high. Whenever their body craves another fix not long after that, they go for another fix, and this cycle goes on and on while their life and environment get hopelessly seedier day by day.
Mark is well-aware of how things are going nowhere for him and his fellow addicts, but he does not care much about that. As reflected by his narration, he defiantly chooses not to make any choice on his life and future, and he also believes that he can quit heroine at anytime, though, not so surprisingly, his attempt early in the film turns out to be not very successful to our little amusement. During one darkly hilarious scene unfolded inside “the worse toilet in Scotland”, he has to do something which will definitely make you wince more than once, and this will remind you of a similar scene in Boyle’s subsequent Oscar-winning film “Slumdog Millionaire” (2008).
As Mark eventually goes back into addiction, the Oscar-nominated screenplay by John Hodge, which is based on the novel of the same name by Irvine Welsh, doles out one episodic moment after another for giving more insight on addiction. In case of one particularly harrowing scene involved with a baby belonging to one of Mark’s fellow addicts, everyone is certainly shocked and horrified at first, but they soon let them get high again just for looking away from their horror and guilt. For addicts, nothing matters much except another fix for themselves, and the movie makes a sharp point on that.
Needless to say, things only get worse for Mark and his addict friends later in the story, and then there comes an inevitable point where he hits another bottom of his addiction. For helping him quitting heroine, his parents decide to do something quite stringent, and we are subsequently served with an intense sequence where Mark struggles a lot with a series of withdrawal symptoms including hallucination.
After going through this difficult moment, Mark decides to make a new start in London, but, of course, that turns out to be a bit more difficult than expected. Not long after he seems to be settled at last with his fairly good job, his fellow addicts come into his life again. He does not welcome this much, but he cannot say no to them because, well, old habits seldom die easily. Regardless of whether he likes it or not, he finds himself drawn again into their reckless lifestyle – until he later sees a possible chance for solving his problem once and for all.
Never overlooking the dark and unpleasant sides of its rather unlikable main characters, the movie steadily injects a lot of style and mood into the story, and Boyle and his cinematographer Brian Tufano did an impressive job of immersing us more into the pathetic environment and lifestyle the main characters are pathetically stuck with. While we usually regard them from the distance, they are also colorful human figures to observe, and we come to have more understanding on what make addicts tick. Being always anxious for another fix to come, they cannot help but hang around with each other just for killing time, and they are certainly bound together in their common misery.
The critical and commercial success of the film certainly boosted the careers of many of its main cast members. While Ewan McGregor, who previously collaborated with Boyle in Boyle’s debut feature film “Shallow Grave” (1994), is engaging in his breakthrough performance, Ewen Bremmer, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, and Robert Carlyle are also unforgettable in their respective supporting roles, and it is no surprise that all of them have advanced a lot during next three decades since the movie came out. In case of several other notable main cast members in the film, Peter Mullan, who was on the way of becoming one of the most dependable British actors, is fun to watch as an older addict called “Mother Superior”, and it is also interesting to see Kelly Macdonald and Shirley Henderson during the early years of their movie acting careers.
In conclusion, “Trainspotting” remains a very compelling movie about addiction even after 30 years while being one of the best works in Boyle’s long and illustrious filmmaking career. After “Trainspotting”, he gave us a number of entertaining films including not only “Slumdog Millionaire” but also “28 Days Later” (2002), “Millions” (2004), “127 Hours” (2010), and “Steve Jobs” (2015), and he recently gave us “Ink” (2026) in this year. As you see, he is still running just like the opening scene of “Trainspotting”, and I sincerely hope that he will continue to run as long as possible.
