11 Lines From My College Newspaper Review of 'Trainspotting' in 1996

A listicle without commentary.

11. “The book may be apparently plotless, graphic, harsh, jumpy and in another language, but it manages to thrust a track-marked hand out, grasp the reader’s neck and keep hold until the last page has been read.”

10. “Now that Trainspotting has made its way across the ocean and into American papers and magazines, now that it’s remotely ‘mainstream,’ you film majors may think you’re too cool for it.”

9. “It shows heroin for what it is: a drug that makes you feel so, so, so good that it destroys your life.”

8. “You see the veritable super-orgasm the junkies feel when they shoot up and you see the blissfully catatonic look in their eyes when they’re on the skag.”

7. “You see the need on their faces, and under that need you see the pain.”

6. “The film isn’t just about heroin, it’s about the futility of belonging to an age group that seems to be headed nowhere.”

5. “It’s brilliant, it’s riveting, it’s hilarious, it’s heart-wrenching, and it will have you falling out of your seat laughing and grabbing both arms of your chair in horror within seconds of each other.”

4. “It’s about finding flashes of brilliance in junkie thieves and flashes of humor in slimy, small-time dealer pimps.”

3. “The filming is tight, the dialogue a brilliant chop-job of the book, and the acting, led by Ewan MacGregor’s stark intensity and witty, brogued voice-overs, is refreshingly raw.”

2. “You super-literary types may think the book is shite and therefore the movie must be shite.”

1. “Well, I don’t hate you for it, you’re just all wankers.”