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.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
It's a disturbing film in the best sense.
TV Guide Magazine by 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.
Ewan McGregor in a raw, funny, star-making performance.
Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum
A must-see.
Chicago Tribune by 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]
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
It would be hard to imagine a movie about drugs, depravity, and all-around bad behavior more electrifying than Trainspotting.
Chicago Sun-Times by 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).