T2 Trainspotting

T2 TRAINSPOTTING

Director : Danny Boyle

Year : 2017

Genre : Drama

Rating : ****

''Nostalgia - that's why you're here. You're a tourist in your own youth.'' - Sick Boy

21 years after kicking heroin and choosing life, Ewan McGregor's former junkie Mark Renton returns to the big screen in 'T2 Trainspotting', Danny Boyle's highly anticipated and equally feared sequel to his landmark 1996 cult comedy classic. Drawing inspiration once again from Irvine Welsh's 1993 pulp novel of the same name as well as it's gritty 2002 follow-up 'Porno', 'T2' reunites audiences with their favourite set of Scottish addicts and sees them two decades older but no less stupid, thoughtless or impulsive - ravaged not by drugs but by age, regret and revenge. 

Now living in Europe with a wife and twins, Renton returns to his old stomping grounds of Edinburgh to make amends for his past mistakes and to seek forgiveness from those he betrayed all those years ago. But while Mark seems to finally have sorted his life out, the same cannot be said for his former friends. Ewen Bremner's eternally thick Spud is introduced to us writing a suicide note and attempting to suffocate himself with a plastic bag, Johnny Lee Miller's cokehead Simon/Sick Boy is running a shady blackmailing scam involving prostitutes from his miserable little pub while Robert Carlyle's relentlessly psychopathic Begbie violently breaks out of prison and goes on the hunt for Renton's apology. And blood.

With it's defined characters, iconic soundtrack, grungy art-house aesthetic and scenes that both shocked and entertained, 'Trainspotting' is arguably the most important British film of the past 30 years and while fans are understandably trepidacious about returning director Boyle's dark and dreary world, no-one was more scared about the prospect of 'T2' than it's creators. In the wake of films such as 'Zoolander 2', 'Bad Santa 2' and 'Anchorman 2 : The Legend Continues', it would be very easy to view this seemingly needless sequel as nothing but a nostalgia-laden cash cow - a lazy follow-up that somehow undermines the brilliance and vivacity of it's youthful and beloved predecessor. Thankfully, that it not the case here.

While it may lack the nastiness or bite of of it's highly controversial older sibling, 'T2' certainly follows in it's vomit-strewn footsteps. Not so much a film about drugs than revenge and retribution, it draws upon it's wealth of interesting and diverse characterisations and develops them in completely appropriate ways; ways that manage to make it's quartet - well trio - of unlikely heroes seem that much more interesting. As is to be expected, McGregor and Lee-Miller do great work here as the once best friend coupling now destroyed by betrayal and regret while the always brilliant Carlyle is simply terrifying as the unhinged Begbie. But the true star of 'T2' is Ewen Bremner who is just terrific as the character of Spud, a wonderfully sympathetic and strangely positive presence in an otherwise thoughtless world and around whom the narrative unexpectedly revolves. 

On a visual level, this film is much more appealing than its 1996 predecessor. While the first movie had a scrungy, almost horror-inflected palette, 'T2' is much more vibrant and colourful, perfectly echoing the ideas of new life and escaping from the nightmares and consequences of the past while the eclectic soundtrack from the likes of High Contrast and Young Fathers hint towards the unknown and uncertain future. Having not grown up with 'Trainspotting', I may not have a nostalgic affection for the source material but as a lover of film, 'T2' is a hilarious, thrilling and perversely poignant reunion. Choose life. Choose good cinema. Choose 'T2 Trainspotting'.