Trainspotting

Director: Danny Boyle
94 mins Film4 Archive

Director Danny Boyle's internationally successful adaptation of Irvine Welsh's novel about a group of young Edinburgh heroin addicts.

Ewan McGregor stars as Mark Renton, the most reflective member of a group that also includes the compulsive womaniser, Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), and the hapless Spud (Ewen Bremner). Renton, Spud and Sick Boy's issues with drugs alternatively irritate and amuse their friend, Begbie (Robert Carlyle), a periodic psychopath whose outbursts of violence are one of the many factors that convince Renton to leave for London in the hope of starting a new life. Renton enjoys some success remoulding himself as an estate agent in the English capital, but it isn't long before his Edinburgh friends catch up with him. Begbie and co need the money Renton has saved from his job to finance the drug deal that could make them all rich...

Awards

Trainspotting was nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award in 1997.