Trainspotting (1996)

All Critics (60) | Top Critics (18) | Fresh (56) | Rotten (6) | DVD (29)

THE experience of watching Trainspotting -- the electric, nasty and slick descent into the milieu of young Scottish junkies -- is a little like speeding through the digestive tract of some voracious beast.

April 12, 2002 Full Review

Liam Lacey

Globe and Mail

Top Critic

Trainspotting is a singular sensation, a visionary knockout spiked with insight, wild invention and outrageous wit.

May 12, 2001

Peter Travers

Rolling Stone

Top Critic

Exuberant and pitiless, profane yet eloquent, flush with the ability to create laughter out of unspeakable situations, "Trainspotting" is a drop-dead look at a dead-end lifestyle that has all the strength of its considerable contradictions.

February 14, 2001 Full Review

Kenneth Turan

Los Angeles Times

Top Critic

It would be pushing it to call Trainspotting a serious work of art or a major statement about anything, but as an edgy, artful piece of entertainment it beats any Hollywood release of the summer by miles.

January 1, 2000 Full Review

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Chicago Reader

Top Critic

The movie has been attacked as pro-drug and defended as anti-drug, but actually it is simply pragmatic. It knows that addiction leads to an unmanageable, exhausting, intensely uncomfortable daily routine, and it knows that only two things make it bearable

January 1, 2000 Full Review

Roger Ebert

Chicago Sun-Times

Top Critic

You stop cringing and start smiling, laughing even, and these kids, who seem like aliens at first, grow on you. They're weirdly likable.

January 1, 2000 Full Review

Joe Baltake

Sacramento Bee

Top Critic

Time has been exceedingly kind to Danny Boyle's excellent breakthrough film and Lionsgate has done a great job preserving it on Blu-ray.

October 7, 2011 Full Review

Chris Cabin

Slant Magazine

Graphic look into heroin addiction. Not for kids.

January 2, 2011 Full Review

Kelly Kessler

Common Sense Media

Trainspotting is a thoroughly shitty movie, which isn't to say it's a bad one.

September 1, 2009 Full Review

Rob Nelson

City Pages, Minneapolis/St. Paul

Though dark in tone and the bulk of the humor is blacker than a raven's wing at midnight, Boyle's sense of humanity persistently creeps in around the edges.

April 2, 2009 Full Review

Ken Hanke

Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)

Among its deeper merits is that it proves a movie doesn't have to be mean to be fresh.

August 5, 2007 Full Review

Rob Gonsalves

eFilmCritic.com

Full of repugnant junkies so unpleasant that I was hoping they'd all OD just so I could escape this torture test.

January 23, 2006 | Comments (27)

Chuck O'Leary

Fantastica Daily

Trainspotting will have to go down in the annals as one of the great anti-heroin films of all time -- better than Otto Preminger's The Man With The Golden Arm, and on a par with Alex Cox's Sid and Nancy, maybe even better!

April 9, 2005 Full Review

Robin Clifford

Reeling Reviews

Put simply, Trainspotting is one of those films that gets the mixture just right. The dialogue, the music, the performances, the direction, the production values, the humor, the shock-value.

July 3, 2004 Full Review

Oz

eFilmCritic.com

Danny Boyle's Trainspotting is a blast of ice-cold water across a sweaty brow; it's a lively, vibrant and pulsatingly addictive movie.

July 1, 2004 Full Review

Scott Weinberg

eFilmCritic.com

It's as if Boyle entered the mind of a junkie, ripped out the catacombs of hallucination and poured them whole onto celluloid.

June 22, 2004 Full Review

Todd Gilchrist

FilmStew.com

A pop culture sensation that drew notice to its own urgency and immediacy.

June 2, 2004 Full Review

Matt Brunson

Creative Loafing

Una historia excepcionalmente narrada.

January 11, 2004 Full Review

Alex Ramirez

Cinenganos

• 1. Sick Boy: All I'm trying to do is help you understand that The Name of the Rose is merely a blip on an otherwise uninterrupted downward trajectory.
  2. Mark Renton: What about The Untouchables?
  3. Sick Boy: I don't rate that at all.
  4. Mark Renton: Despite the Academy Award?
  5. Sick Boy: That means fuck all. The sympathy vote.
  – Submitted by Sebastian C (2 months ago)
• 1. Mark Renton: Straight away he clocked us for what we were. Small-time wasters with an accidental big deal.
  – Submitted by Ann A (2 months ago)
• 1. Mark Renton: Sick Boy is seriously lacking in moral fiber.
  2. Dealer: But he knows a lot about Sean Connery.
  3. Mark Renton: That's hardly a substitute.
  – Submitted by Ann A (2 months ago)
• 1. Mark Renton: : It's SHITE being Scottish! We're the lowest of the low. The scum of the fucking Earth! The most wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization. Some hate the English. I don't. They're just wankers. We, on the other hand, are COLONIZED by wankers. Can't even find a decent culture to be colonized BY. We're ruled by effete assholes. It's a SHITE state of affairs to be in, Tommy, and ALL the fresh air in the world won't make any fucking difference.
  – Submitted by Milena K (5 months ago)
• 1. Mark Renton: It's SHITE being Scottish! We're the lowest of the low. The scum of the fucking Earth! The most wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization. Some hate the English. I don't. They're just wankers. We, on the other hand, are COLONIZED by wankers. Can't even find a decent culture to be colonized BY. We're ruled by effete assholes. It's a SHITE state of affairs to be in, Tommy, and ALL the fresh air in the world won't make any fucking difference.
  – Submitted by Milena K (5 months ago)
• 1. Sick Boy: Personality, I mean that's what counts, right? That's what keeps a relationship going through the years. Like heroin, I mean heroin's got a great fucking personality.
  – Submitted by Lucas M (7 months ago)

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