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Ewan McGregor has never looked so healthy!

There was a time, long ago, when an altogether more youthful version of the person writing this review believed that “heroin” meant “really brave lady”, and “smack” was what you got for hitting Rachel Sillett over the head with a broom handle at nursery. Ah, the sweet innocence of youth.

I’ve learnt a lot since then, of course, and it’s just as well because ‘Trainspotting’, Danny Boyle’s classic Brit-flick of the 1990’s, has joined us on Blu-ray, and it’s still packing a punch after all these years.

STORYTELLING:  
The novel on which this film is based is a notoriously chaotic affair, with Irvine ‘Porno’ Welsh capturing the life of the ‘90s heroin addict superbly with complicated, intermingling, occasionally rambling narratives woven together into a gloriously messy whole.

It’s probably a good thing, however, that director Danny Boyle and screenwriter John Hodge avoided heading down that path when it came to converting said novel for the screen, but that’s not to say that watching this movie isn’t still something of a wacky ride.

We follow Renton (Ewan McGregor), a young Edinburgh junkie, as he attempts to kick his scag habit, negotiating his way precariously through relationships as destructive and screwed up as they are varied, from psychopathic mates and Sean Connery wannabes to underage jailbait girlfriends and London letting agents.

Teetering uncertainly on the tipping point between life and nihilistic self-destruction, Renton and his smacked-up partners in slackery treat us to a high octane hour and a half of highs, lows and general self abuse, the fallout from which provides the bulk of the film’s action.

Truthful yet ambivalent, Boyle shows us the lowest, scummiest underbelly of society behaving exactly as we’d expect in all its putrid, violent, occasionally funny and frequently shocking splendour.

We get some superb performances, most notably from McGregor as the tormented Renton, and Robert Carlyle as the fantastically psychotic Francis Begbie.

Dark, gritty, moving and painfully, painfully honest, Trainspotting is one of the most iconic films of the ’90s, and it’s lost none of it lustre over the past thirteen years.