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EVIL SHOT

Director:                   Danny Boyle
Writing:                     Irvine Welsh(novel)
S creenplay:             John Hodge
Producers :              Andrew Macdonald
                                  Christopher Figg
Cinematography:    Brian Tufano

It’s difficult to review this movie – in fact I’ve asked at least two friends who would consider themselves more critics that I to write this review (but strangely no-one ever has)…so by default here I go.

Firstly – you could not have heard of Trainspotting – unless you’re about 14 (in which case you were 3 when this film was made). Taken from a book by Irving Welsh and directly brilliantly by Danny Boyle it tells the story of a group of Scottish misfits some of whom are more dependant on Heroin than others!

Let’s be clear – THIS IS NOT – a pro drugs movie – in case you’ve missed drugs education – if you tell lots of people not to do something they’ll just as likely do it. Better to inform them of the consequences and let them make their own choice and that choice is likely to be a better one. You can tell I’m sick to death of people ranting on how this is a film advocating taking H – I mean have you seen the movie!!

Ewan McGregor's character Renton is either stealing to get H, stealing other drugs to buy H or high – and he does all these things beautifully! The equally charismatic Johnny Lee Miller plays Sick Boy, a suave Sean Connery fan who puts money over his friends any time. Robert Carlyle plays Begbie, a nationalistic hothead who gets high on violence rather than heroin. Ewen Bremner plays Spud, the nerdy follower who is the most luckless of the clan – who has the clearly best line of the movie,

Interviewer: 'Mr. Murphy, what attracts you to the leisure industry?

Spud: ‘In a word: pleasure. It's like, my pleasure in other people's leisure'

The superb Kevin McKidd as Tommy, the clean, exercise junkie who will, much later in his career, play the Roman centurion in the HBO version of Rome and is also in the equally superb Dog Soldiers . Kelly MacDonald (in her first movie role) is a temptress schoolgirl who falls for Renton in a bar (gives him a diatribe that would fell an SS Panzer division) and who can either forget her perfect breasts or Rentons line in the same scene,

‘I haven't felt that good since Archie Gemmill scored against Holland in 1978’

Though Renton's character is central, all of his "so called friends" are cleanly written, well summarised, and do their part to create the air of hostility and pressure which Renton must face in his battle to rid himself of heroin.

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