T2 Trainspotting

Deep down, I'm not sure I ever believed we would actually get a sequel to Trainspotting until, miraculously, twenty years later we actually did get a sequel. It was something that had long been rumored over the years, but it never seemed like it would actually materialize. It was a prospect I looked forward to as I really did love these characters and was curious to see what had happened to them. Perhaps not getting a sequel until now was fitting. It feels like enough time has passed that checking in with them again would be a worthwhile time. Much to my surprise, it turns out that it actually was worthwhile too. 

The film starts with Mark Renton (played by Ewan McGregor) returning to Edinburgh after living in Amsterdam for the past twenty years. After a visit to his family home, he goes to visit Spud (played by Ewan Bremmer), who he discovers is not doing well and still struggling with heroin addiction. His visit to Sick Boy (played by Jonny Lee Miller), who is now addicted to cocaine, running a local bar and running a blackmail scheme on the side, goes even less well as Sick Boy is still sore at Mark for stealing $16,000 from him and Begbie and running off. Begbie (played by Robert Carlyle) has staged an escape from prison after being denied bail and has returned home as well, intending to resume his criminal ways. Meanwhile, Sick Boy devises a scheme with Mark and his girlfriend Veronika (played by Anjela Nedyalkova) to turn the second level of his bar into a brothel. The three become partners in crime to try and raise the funds to make the necessary renovations to the second level, recruiting Spud (who has recently lost his job and family to his heroin habit) to help as well. Meanwhile, it's only a matter of time before the hot-headed Begbie finds out Mark is back in town and wanting the money he stole back.    

While it's not as good as the first, director Danny Boyle and writer John Hodge manage to craft a solid follow-up to the first film that takes a good hard look at the original film's characters twenty years later. Mark, Sick Boy and Spud all have plenty of regrets and are trying to find a way to move ahead in their lives despite past mistakes with mixed results. Sick Boy is trying to keep the bar he inherited from his aunt afloat despite being in a terrible neighborhood with very little in the way of a customer base. This has lead him to a blackmailing scheme with his girlfriend Veronika to try and make ends meet, while also having other schemes in process including a pot grow house in the basement of the bar. He's also nursing a pretty serious cocaine addiction which is not helping. Mark has returned to Edinburgh from Amsterdam trying to find some direction in his life after suffering a serious heart attack (on a treadmill, in a health club, which we see in the opening scene of the film). Poor Spud has lost everything to his heroin addiction, losing his job, his girlfriend and his young son. It's only when he's drawn into Mark and Sick Boy's latest scheme that he manages to start to put his life back together as well as find a desire to do that. And then there is Begbie, who is eager to return to his criminal ways after breaking out of prison and wants his son to join in, but his son would rather go to school for hotel management. Boyle and Hodge manage to juggle all these plot lines quite well, making this film much more of an ensemble film than the previous film. They also frequently make nods to the original film as characters reflect on their past mistakes. Renton even revisits his famous "Choose Life" speech, updating it for today's world in a rant that starts out playful before descending into painful regret and sorrow at what his life has become. 

The acting is also quite good in the film, with the cast of actors more or less picking up their characters twenty years later. It really does feel like the same characters too. Sometimes with late in the day sequels, the characters don't feel quite right even though it's the same actors playing them. In this case, I really did feel like I was seeing Mark, Sick Boy, Spud, and Begbie again. It probably helps that we have the same director and writer returning as well, but they all managed to recapture their characters quite well. Ewan McGregor manages to recapture Mark Renton well, showing the man weighted down by the regret and mistakes that have dominated his life. While he managed to successfully kick heroin, his running away at the end of the first film continued to reverberate consequences that he is now left to deal with. Jonny Lee Miller also does great at recapturing Sick Boy, who has lost the confidence he had as a young lad and is now just trying to make things work the only way he knows how. Ewan Bremmer really tugged my heart strings as poor Spud, who seemed to be left behind by his friends and while he's glad to see his best mate Mark back, he's still mad at him for leaving. Still, it was nice to see Spud start to pull his life together again as the film went on and Ewan Bremmer did a good job portraying the struggles of his character and making him sympathetic. Robert Carlyle returns as Begbie, probably the one character who hasn't grown at all and is still the same violent, crazy nutter he was in the first film, just older and a little slower. One can only wonder why Mark, Sick Boy and Spud ever had anything to do with this guy, which this film does shed a little light on, actually.

Overall, T2 Trainspotting is a different beast from the original film, as it perhaps should be. As the first film was very much of the '90's, this film very much feels part of 2017. The characters are older, have grown and changed and it only makes sense that the feel of the film would change with it. But never once did I feel like I wasn't catching up with Renton, Sick Boy or Spud and in this day and age of the "nostalgia" sequels, that's saying something. They nailed it and created a solid follow-up to the classic original. It's not Trainspotting, but then again it never should have been anyway.