Audience Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 0780063995436
Format: Closed-captioned, Dolby, PAL, Surround Sound
Label: 4 Front Video
Languages: EnglishOriginal LanguageAnalog
Manufacturer: 4 Front Video
Number Of Discs: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: 4 Front Video
Release Date: July 12, 2004
Running Time: 90 minutes
Studio: 4 Front Video
Theatrical Release Date: July 19, 1996

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.co.uk Review:
The film that effectively launched the star careers of Robert Carlyle, Ewan McGregor and Jonny Lee Miller is a hard, barbed picaresque, culled from the bestseller by Irvine Welsh and thrown down against the heroin hinterlands of Edinburgh. Directed with abandon by Danny Boyle, Trainspotting conspires to be at once a hip youth flick and a grim cautionary fable. Released on an unsuspecting public in 1996, the picture struck a chord with audiences worldwide and became adopted as an instant symbol of a booming British rave culture (an irony, given the characters' main drug of choice is heroin not ecstasy).

McGregor, Lee Miller and Ewen Bremner play a slouching trio of Scottish junkies; Carlyle their narcotic-eschewing but hard-drinking and generally psychotic mate Begbie. In Boyle's hands, their lives unfold in a rush of euphoric highs, blow-out overdoses and agonising withdrawals (all cued to a vogueish pop soundtrack). Throughout it all, John Hodge's screenplay strikes a delicate balance between acknowledging the inherent pleasures of drug use and spotlighting its eventual consequences. In Trainspotting's world view, it all comes down to a question of choices--between the dangerous Day-Glo highs of the addict and the grey, grinding consumerism of the everyday Joe. "Choose life", quips the film's narrator (McGregor) in a monologue that was to become a mantra. "Choose a job, choose a starter home... But why would anyone want to do a thing like that?" Ultimately, Trainspotting's wised-up, dead-beat inhabitants reject mainstream society in favour of a headlong rush to destruction. It makes for an exhilarating, energised and frequently terrifying trip that blazes with more energy and passion than a thousand more ostensibly life-embracing movies. --Xan Brooks




Rating: - style over substance
as someone from Edinburgh who lived and went to plenty of the places mentioned in Trainspotting i have to say read the book the book instead which has the full content and message rather than just a comic short hand for what was happening at the time. It made fashionista fools think that taking hard drugs was a nice activity and gave them kudos and brought in too many people too Edinburgh looking for that lifestyle.
I have never managed it all the way through and think it is just an alternative ... Read More

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Rating: - champion stuff
Trainspotting caught a nations breath when it was released in 1996,it felt when i look back that the entire world had seen it and not only enjoyed it,but learnt the script,picked up the phrases and gave the film a success that few in the studio at the time would have predicted,the soundtrack sold like hotcakes,people picked their character in the film that they admired and this film was as much an icon of the 90s as cds,oasis and four weddings and a funeral to name just a few.
Twelve of so years ... Read More

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Rating: - one of the best films!
One of my all time favourite films, although I haven't bothered to watch any of the extras.

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Rating: - Choose Life, Choose "Trainspotting"
There are better, bolder, and more profoundly made British films than Trainspotting, but if there's one certainity in its presence, it's that it is the British film. There are movies like David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Hodges' Get Carter (1971) which are always seen on the critics lists as best of all times, but there is no doubt that Trainspotting (1996) is the most important British film ever made. Maybe even the finest. The movies' ninety minutes does the impossible: It expounds the grittiness ... Read More

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Rating: - Choose the best British film of 1996
Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter John Hodge's 1996 adaptation of Irvine Welsh's 1993 debut novel was so central to young British culture at that time that it was always in danger of being forgotten as a mere curio of a bygone Britpop era. Thankfully, good comedy leads a long life, especially the black stuff. In the meanest, wittiest way, Trainspotting said "bollocks" to Britpop - in fact, it said "bollocks" to every fad and fashion going - and so it became immortal.

Welsh's novel is, like many ... Read More

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