T2: Trainspotting

2017’s “T2: Trainspotting”, directed by Danny Boyle.

Starring Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle, Ewen Bremner, Anjela Nedyalkova, Kelly McDonald, and Irvine Welsh.

1996’s “Trainspotting” further placed Danny Boyle on the directing map. His adaptation of Edinburgh author Irvine Welsh’s tale about drug addiction was a gleeful and exhilarating cautionary tale about youth’s painful lessons. Flush with a thrilling soundtrack and exaggerated scenes of the character’s lives, it depicted how difficult it was to choose life when you have heroin, but maintained that a clean break was possible as long as you don’t mind pissing off your mates. Timeless in its enjoyment but very much a memorial to 80’s Edinburgh, it was a 90’s cinch that is a pleasure to return to.

Sharing that sentiment, Boyle brings back the old gang 20 years later, last seen being betrayed by a member of the group after a successful drug deal. We catch up with McGregor (Renton), now a married accountant and visiting Edinburgh from Amsterdam. Miller (Sick Boy), when not snorting cocaine, runs a dive bar with a Bulgarian prostitute (Nedyalkova) whom he uses to lure men so he can videotape them for blackmail purposes. We see Carlyle (Bagby) still in prison, bathing in his usual hostility that makes him at times resemble a motor mouthed Michael Myers. Finally, Bremner (Spud), still an active heroin addict, going through his struggles of losing employment, his partner, and custody of his child. The 4 of them end up together, with dreams of opening up a “spa” (brothel), with plenty of hustling, reminiscing, and relapses along the way.

In interviews, Boyle has stated that the time was right to show the changes in the characters of Trainspotting, loosely basing it around Welsh’s book sequel, “Porno”. Returning is the original gang, the depravity, the innovative camera work and visuals, even some of the same songs. There are some new wrinkles, both figurative and especially literal- but we’ve seen this before. Throwing in a throwaway trope about Bremner writing a memoir that retells the original movie that the sequel simultaneously is celebrating, the terribly named “T2: Judgement Day Trainspotting” starts to lose it’s lust for life. When it’s needle comes off the well worn tracks, “T2” has it’s moments of cathartic inertia (McGregor’s visit to his old house is stunning, and the Nedyalkova character is a treat), but when it treads old ground in their 20 years wiser bodies, as one of the characters proclaims, “It’s over- can we go home now?”

3/5

Trailer: Click Here.