80
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?
87
It's a disturbing film in the best sense.
70
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.
80
Ewan McGregor in a raw, funny, star-making performance.
80
Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum
A must-see.
100
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]
100
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.
75
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).