THE experience of watching Trainspotting -- the electric, nasty and slick descent into the milieu of young Scottish junkies -- is a little like speeding through the digestive tract of some voracious beast. full review

A few patches are subtitled, but the general effect is of watching an opera without having read the libretto.

Trainspotting is a singular sensation, a visionary knockout spiked with insight, wild invention and outrageous wit.

Exuberant and pitiless, profane yet eloquent, flush with the ability to create laughter out of unspeakable situations, "Trainspotting" is a drop-dead look at a dead-end lifestyle that has all the strength of its considerable contradictions. full review

It would be pushing it to call Trainspotting a serious work of art or a major statement about anything, but as an edgy, artful piece of entertainment it beats any Hollywood release of the summer by miles. full review

This isn't an examination of the Scottish drug culture from the outside looking in, it's one from the inside looking out. full review

The movie tags at the heels of Edinburgh social dropouts Renton, Spud, Sick Boy and Begbie, for whom getting off beats getting out. full review

Hip, brutally honest and humane... full review

You stop cringing and start smiling, laughing even, and these kids, who seem like aliens at first, grow on you. They're weirdly likable. full review

The movie has been attacked as pro-drug and defended as anti-drug, but actually it is simply pragmatic. It knows that addiction leads to an unmanageable, exhausting, intensely uncomfortable daily routine, and it knows that only two things make it bearable full review

For better or worse, sometimes strictly for the sake of shock value, the stylish irreverence of "Trainspotting" mimics that drug high and delivers its own potent kick. full review

This is not dour social realism. It's a shot- from-a-cannon youth movie, with likable young people sticking needles in their arms in working-class Edinburgh. full review

...rapid-fire youth-culture freak show: random sex, in-your-face scatology, senseless violence and rampant profanity delivered in haggis-thick brogues.