Movie · 1996 · Drama, Crime · 1h 34m · R · English
Curator score: 9.1/10 (1.9M ratings)
Choose life.
Overview
Heroin addict Mark Renton stumbles through bad ideas and sobriety attempts with his unreliable friends --Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud and Tommy. He also has an underage girlfriend, Diane, along for the ride. After cleaning up and moving from Edinburgh to London, Mark finds he can't escape the life he left behind as Begbie and Sick Boy come knocking.
Ratings
Curator score: 9.1/10
IMDb: 8.1/10
Letterboxd: 4.22/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 90%
Metacritic: 83
TMDB: 8.0/10
Director
Danny Boyle
Production
Figment Films, The Noel Gay Motion Picture Company, Channel Four Films, DNA Films
Cast
Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, Robert Carlyle, Kelly Macdonald, Peter Mullan, James Cosmo, Eileen Nicholas, Susan Vidler, Pauline Lynch, Shirley Henderson, Stuart McQuarrie, Irvine Welsh, Dale Winton, Keith Allen, Kevin Allen, Annie Louise Ross, Billy Riddoch, Fiona Bell
Curator Review
Verdict
A bracing, darkly funny, and formally electric portrait of addiction, friendship, and self-destruction. It’s abrasive, stylish, and often disgusting on purpose, but the energy, wit, and cultural bite make it a landmark 90s film.
Best for
Viewers who like kinetic, stylized crime dramas
People interested in bleak but funny character studies
Fans of 90s British and indie cinema
Audiences open to graphic drug use and nihilistic humor
Skip if
You want an uplifting recovery story
You’re sensitive to explicit drug use, bodily horror, or sexual content
You prefer plot-driven crime films over mood and attitude
You dislike aggressive editing, slang-heavy dialogue, or cynical humor
Overview
Trainspotting is one of the defining films of the 1990s because it refuses to romanticize anything it shows. Danny Boyle turns a grim story of heroin addiction into something propulsive, funny, and deeply unsettling, balancing manic visual invention with moments of real despair. The result is a film that feels alive in every frame, even when its characters are stuck in cycles of self-destruction.
Worth noting
What gives it staying power is the mix of swagger and sadness. Mark Renton’s voiceover gives the movie its bite, but the ensemble is what makes it memorable: each friend is a different version of escape, delusion, or collapse. It’s a movie about choosing life, but it never pretends that choice is simple or clean.
Bottom line
The film’s style is inseparable from its subject: frantic cuts, jagged humor, and a soundtrack that does as much storytelling as the script. It’s ugly, exhilarating, and weirdly tender in places, which is why it remains so rewatchable and so widely quoted.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Framesofnick (5★) · 22272 likes
The Boy And The Heroin
Theodora (5★) · 17699 likes
ewan macgregor in a crop top saved cinema just saying
Karsten (4★) · 14898 likes
you know how you can smell certain movies? yeah, this one smells like cigarettes and feces.
kayla (4.5★) · 12016 likes
“1,000 years from now there will be no guys and no girls, just wankers. Sounds great to me.”
Larry (5★) · 9952 likes
*Edited 4/24/26. Thank you all so much for the love on this review!*
The word "trainspotting" can mean different things.
If you read it literally, it sounds like the act of watching trains at the station pass you by. Or maybe even "spotting" them as a hobby.
It's can also be used among junkies to signal the track marks left by needles on the arms of heroin addicts.
In the context of Danny Boyle's masterpiece, the word means both, actually.… more