Trainspotting: Dark Comedic Story Of Mark Renton

Trainspotting is a 1996 film telling the dark comedic story of Mark Renton and his hand few of friends in the UK and their battle with heroin addiction and breaking the law. Personal note this film is one of my all-time favorites, so I was incredibly excited to write a paper on it. The story opens in Edinburgh Scotland, Mark is running form security guards after he had just robbed a store with his friend Spud. This is the scene where Mark goes over one of the central points of the movie “choosing life”. Mark states other people have chosen life with a stable marriage, house, 401k etc. while he and his friends have chosen heroin addiction and the crazy life that brings. Right after this scene we are introduced to Marks other friends, Sick Boy the scammer, Tommy the clean one of the group, and Frank who is the psycho one. All the guys (minus Tommy) spend their days getting high on heroin with their drug dealer Swanney.
Eventually Mark decides to give up heroin and locks himself in his room to do his regular detox ritual but gets very sick from his last hit of heroin.
He goes to a club with his friends to get his mind off of it. Mark leaves with a young woman named Diane, they have sex and Mark has to sleep in the hall. The next day Mark realizes he’s just had sex with a 15-year-old and scared, tried to leave the house. Diana threatens to tell the police so Mark continues to talk to her because of this. Tommy is dumped by his girlfriend because of a crazy string of events caused my Mark. He stole Tommy’s sex tape and replaced the tape. His girlfriend believed Tommy retuned the tape to the video store. The break up causes Tommy to enter a deep depression and try Heroin, against Marks
wishes.

During one of their heroin induced stupors the boys awake to the screams of a fellow heroin addict Allison who found her baby kid dead in her crib because of neglect. Sick boy is the father and has a breakdown because of the incident. The movie flashes to the beginning of the movie where Mark and Spud are stealing form the store. It shows them getting arrested and then sentenced to a drug rehabilitation program while Spud is sentenced to prison. Mark is locked in his room by his parents so he can try and come down from heroin. He escapes and heads to Swanney’s apartment where he takes a strong hit and has to be taken to the hospital. He’s locked in his room again and has to quit cold turkey. He goes through incredibly strong withdraw symptoms including, hallucinations that Diane is singing to him, Allison’s dead baby crawling along the ceiling and its head twisting around. Including a scene with his parents on a TV show getting questions about HIV. Mark eventually wakes up and his parents make him get tested and even though he’s spend using needles his HIV test comes back negative.

Mark decides to visit Tommy who has completely lost it to heroin, contracting HIV. His house is filthy and disgusting because of his addiction taking over his life. Mark decides to move to London to become a real estate agent, shortly after Begbie attempts an armed robbery and breaks into Marks house after. Tommy soon dies due to toxoplasmosis and they all have to travel back to attend the funeral. When they get back they meet up with Spud as he’s newly out of prison. Sick boy plans a sketchy heroin deal where they would sell the heroin for £16,000. Early in the morning after the deal Mark wakes up and steals the money, Spud sees him doing this. After leaving the hotel Begbie has a freak out and starts destroying the hotel room until the police come. Mark heads back to London and leaves some money back for Spud. Mark decides to turn away from heroin and chose life.