9 Stunning Opening Movie Scenes That Hooked You Immediately

5. Trainspotting

No film will ever hit the ground running quite as hard as Trainspotting did in 1996, quite literally. Catapulting director Danny Boyle and actor Ewan McGregor into stardom, the film was a critical and commercial success that dealt with weighty subject matter with a serious message. About the addiction, allure, and dangers of drug-taking and set in the economically starved world of 1990's Edinburgh, Trainspotting pulled out no stops in showing us the effect heroin has on urban misfits.

The opening scene engages from the get-go, feeling more like a music video than the introduction to a movie, we are introduced to the world of Renton and his friends. As the drums of Iggy Pops 'Lust for Life' slam away through our speakers, Ewan McGregor's Renton and his friend Spud are dashing away from authorities around street corners, down alleyways and staircases.

What's most memorable about this stellar intro however is the famous monologue Renton delivers whilst evading capture. 'Choose life' he commands, 'Choose a job. Choose a Career. Choose a family. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers'. Renton begins to self-righteously list off the material life that engulfs our world.

It's an attack targeted at the very existence of the audience, whittling down and minimising our lives to the arbitrary things that dominate it. 'Choose your future' he tells us, 'Choose life'. Until we are smacked straight into the heart of the film as he asks 'why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose to do something else, and the reasons? Who needs reasons when you have heroin?'

It's a great establishment of his character and the themes of the film to come, and it's told in such a rhythmic, entertaining way that it's hard to look away once you have seen it.