TRAINSPOTTING (74)

Directed by: Danny Boyle

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle

The Pitch: Young heroin junkies in Edinburgh try - and generally fail - to go cold turkey.

Theo Sez: Blistering stuff, a ferocious film that carves its mark brutally but very skilfully into the mind. The only comparable recent movie for unblinking viciousness is perhaps NAKED, which however both tempered and transcended its dark worldview by being hilariously funny in a zany, disarmingly intellectual way. Here, though there's plenty of humour it's crude and laddish, sometimes scatological and always very cruel - far from putting perspective on the nihilism it merely reinforces the impression that the film was put together by some very nasty little minds. That's ultimately why it's not (like NAKED) a great movie, but it's a brilliantly compelling one. Style is even more delirious than in SHALLOW GRAVE (favourite moment: Renton swallowed up by the floor during a bad trip) and Boyle, an avowed modernist, treats breakneck pacing as an article of faith. The inevitable charges of glorifying heroin are pretty silly - the film is scarily honest about the dangers of addiction. It would be much more useful to debate why the theme of turning one's back on an empty society has struck such a chord with British audiences, and - above all - why such a huge number of people have been drawn to a film (and book) so relentlessly harsh, cynical and lacking in compassion.