T2 Trainspotting (2017)

Review

117min

Genre:     Drama

Director:  Danny Boyle

Cast:       Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Jonny Lee Miller…and more

Writers:   Irvine Welsh and John Hodge

-Synopsis-

Twenty years after taking the money and running, ‘Renton’ returns to Edinburgh to find a new purpose in life and try to make amends with former best mates ‘Sick Boy’ and ‘Spud’. But his plans and wellbeing are put in jeopardy when he’s thrust on a collision course with a rampaging ‘Begbie’ hell-bent on revenge in Danny Boyle’s sequel to the film which truly launched several extraordinary careers.

The Boyos are back in town!… and still making bad decisions. Boyle’s first ever sequel sees him return to the dynamic working-class masterpiece which skyrocketed his career and shattered the sanitised image of urban Scotland (and Britain), while feeding into a gritty new counter-culture and the ‘cool Britannia’ movement of the early 90s. But as a sequel based 20 years after the original, our expectations (if not our hopes) were tempered by the sheer passage of time and everything that comes with it, and the impossibility of re-capturing all the fresh and eye-opening elements which made 1996’s ‘Trainspotting’ so memorable.

Luckily for us the return of the entire cast and Boyle at the helm, plus the input of the original novel’s author Irvine Welsh signalled good omens for an emotionally rounding follow-up, which would capture the iconoclastic essence of the original while maturing the narrative… but no too much. And thankfully that’s exactly what we get from this unexpected, not particularly long-awaited but certainly welcome sequel.

Along with a familiar Scottish supporting cast and Bulgarian newcomer Anjela Nedyalkova as the new female lead, Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle and Ewen Bremner return as four fortysomething Scottish chancers struggling to shake off the demons of the past, stuck in their own working-class social purgatory in a rapidly changing world that threatens to leave them behind.

Like its 1996 predecessor ‘T2 Trainspotting’ is a darkly comic and gritty urban drama with plenty of drug use and sexual references, although it doesn’t do as much to earn its 18 rating as the original did, and of course there’s plenty of coarse language in a dialect which again might be near unintelligible to non-Brits. But it’s also a distinctly socially conscious film, touching upon themes of social mobility, gentrification, globalisation, the soon-to-be defunct EU ‘experiment’, and the ever present spectre of addiction. There’s a distinctly darker tone and more stark outlook here, with none of the youthful exuberance that the original had despite its dark themes, gone is much of the cool factor and in comes a view of the world beyond the oblivion of addiction which isn’t too appealing… but Boyle & co. do strain to offer some measure of hope.

No doubt ‘T2 Trainspotting’ functions off plenty of nostalgia, not only building on the narrative of the first film and visiting with familiar characters, but also featuring some recognisable classic music, plus a soundtrack of new tunes with all the energy of the original soundtrack… but not much of the quality. There’s also an updated version of the ‘choose life’ spiel for you to chew on, this time focused on an even more broken society based in a culture of conformity and delusion. But it’s also simultaneously a welcome critique of nostalgia, with Boyle and screenwriter John Hodge taking a dig at a culture obsessed with resurrecting ‘better days’ and regurgitating past glories.

It’s a rare achievement for a director to leave decades between an exceptional original film and its sequel while still maintain much of the a quality and even a modicum of its impact, but Danny Boyle effectively uses the passage of time here to simultaneously take a look back and push the narrative forward. ‘T2 Trainspotting’ is not the modern classic that its predecessor was and was never going to have the same impact, thanks to the last twenty years of similar gritty urban dramas which have dulled our senses and altered expectations, but this is still an invigorating and entertaining sequel which does justice to the original.

The Bottom Line…

Although it’s an unnecessary sequel which was never going to have the impact or the cultural resonance of the unforgettable 1996 original, Danny Boyle has managed to successfully reunite the cast and shape an entertaining and engrossing story of unconventional friendship, with more than enough to once again raise a few eyebrows. ‘T2 Trainspotting’ won’t move the needle on British cinema like its predecessor did, but with plenty to say about our society 20 years on and with some emotional closure for the group of marginalised Scottish lads we’ve grown up with, this successful sequel will leave more than just a needle mark on out cinematic memory.

Similar films you may like (Home Video)

Trainspotting (1996)

Danny Boyle’s working-class British modern counter-culture classic follows the misfortunes of a group of young urban Scots, as they make bad decisions and feed their habits while shunning social norms and a ‘normal’ life in this adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s first novel.

Directed by Danny Boyle and starring Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle and Jonny Lee Miller among others.

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