Trainspotting exploded onto cinema screens and into popular culture, the pounding drums of Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life accompanying Renton’s (Ewan McGregor) belittling of consumerist society immediately iconic, and its soundtrack as ubiquitous as that of Pulp Fiction. Renton, Spud (Ewen Bremner), and fellow heroin addict Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) fall in and out of love with the drug, yet somehow, accompanied by terrifying contemporary Begbie (Robert Carlyle), manage to devise a get-rich-quick scheme. Rereleased in a new digital restoration, its flashy style and crackling dialogue can’t mask that this energetic adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel is, ultimately, a bleak, nihilistic depiction of drug culture and addiction.

Notes by Kevin Coyne