One thing that I love about this film is that now people see Ewan McGregor as Obi Wan Kenobi and an amazing singer in Beauty and The Beast and Moulin Rouge but its nice that this film is where he really became a star, not too sound like an E! Documentary, but its true. It's also Danny Boyle's second film, and again its nice that he has this huge success of Slumdog and 127 Hours, its so lovely that his first big success was a gritty British mainly Scottish drama about Drugs and young people.
The story is about a group of friends, and their addiction to Drugs, it starts with Mark Renton known as Renton in the film (played by Ewan McGregor) who wants to quit Heroin, and locks himself in a hotel room to withdrawal from it all. He goes with his friends to a nightclub and they're all getting of with girls so Renton hooks up with Diane (played by Kelly Macdonald) who turns out to be a 15 year old school girl. All of Renton's mates, Simon 'Sick Boy' Williamson (played by Johnny Lee Miller) Daniel 'Spud' Murphy (played by Ewen Bremner), start taking Heroin again. Renton's other friends Thomas 'Tommy' MacKenzie (played Kevin Kidd) and Francis 'Franco' Begdie (played by Robert Carlyle, aren't drug addicts but they are completely problematic. Its just about them quitting and getting into mischief I should say.
I absolutely love this film, its so gritty and real, it's just brilliantly edited, I love the way they edited this scenes together when they were all hooking with with different girls. They way they use music in the film is so good aswell, I love it when films understand music and how much of an impact it can have on a viewer, the way I see it is, its used as a highlighter it just makes it 10 times better. Particularly if its a scene filled with emotion, whether it be love and sex or a fight scene with anger it just gives it more character for me anyway. I also love that this isn't set in London not that I hate London its just whenever people talk about England or Britain they immediately think 'Oh London' and its like London's one place and its huge but England and the rest of Britain is litter with different people from different backgrounds. I think people need to remember that, and celebrate that we're not all from London.
The characters are so brilliant and well written I love it, and I need to see the second one because it was ended on a bit of a cliffhanger and that's annoying, plus it seemed to centre around Renton not that that's bad, its just I'd like to get to know the other characters in the group. Like Franco, I love that he is a stereotype of an angry scott, but I wanna know more about him, and obviously I understand in over an hour story you kinda have to fit everything in once, that means characters and all that. I also love the poster I know that's a weird thing to like, but I love that its so different and out there, and that fact that if you looked at it you wouldn't think its a film.
The way I feel about this film is how I felt about Sid and Nancy, it being a young actor and with the knowledge of them being so amazing in the future, and at the time of the film being made it's just them not knowing a thing but still being so captivating and wonderful to watch. Its definitely one of my favourite 90's films and I guess Coming Of Age film if you can call it that, I wouldn't recommend a 10 year old to watch this, but my 10 year old self wouldn't listen to me at all. You should definitely watch this film, not because of a young Ewan McGregor, but the fact that its an amazingly written film and wonderfully casted and edited.
