Word: rentonly
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Another Miramax import, the film tracks the misadventures of some twentysomethings in Scotland, nice little punks in their own special ways. The movie's humble narrator is Renton (Ewan McGregor), heroin addict by zealous choice, as he informs us in sympathetically bitter intonations...
Chief among such MTV-style additions is the incessant soundtrack which accompanies the characters' every move. This is a movie that has to indicate a scene's deep emotion by turning off the music, not turning it on. When Renton's going into withdrawal, you know from the muted, beta-wave techno beat that it'll be a typical, painless cold turkey exercise in fantasy: he'll be fine, whatever the psychedelic hallucinations. It's as if the filmmakers had some quota to fill for the movie's soundtrack album...
McGregor's Renton fulfills all the requirements for his position as narrator, his spare intonations and face on close-shaven head giving good expression to all the horrors he must experience (not the least involving an opium suppository). Ewen Bremmer as Spud mugs more than Tim Roth at his most goofy, cowering and jerky...
...indeed feel real fear that you might be tapping the seat in front of you too much and Begbie's there, ready to reel off a stream of incoherent expletives and then sink a broken beer bottle into your neck. Tearing up a hotel room, living uninvited at Renton's, fighting dirty in brawls--he perfectly embodies the worst of every violent, drunken rage...
...Trainspotting role of Renton was different. "I liked his ballsy courage and intelligence," McGregor says. "There's something exciting about someone that nihilistic." McGregor shed 28 lbs. to play the wily drug abuser and discussed with director Danny Boyle whether he should try shooting heroin. In the end the actor just said no because it would have been disrespectful to the recovering addicts acting as technical advisers...