T2: Trainspotting

(A few minor spoilers, little more than included in trailers)

I was too young to see the original when it was first released, but I remember the buzz around it. I remember sitting in my pal's bedroom playing Fifa and reading the 'Choose Life' poster on his wall and wondering what fixed-interest mortgage repayments even were. Much to my dad's chagrin, I managed to get a copy and saw it for the first time at fifteen and no subsequent viewing has matched up to the first time you see Renton storming down Princes Street to Iggy Pop, And that's always the worry for a sequel to any seminal work, but especially this one: could it do it justice? Would it be cash-in pish, or possibly worse, an average effort we'd all forget about before the end of the year?

T2 is full of nods to its predecessor both visually and aurally - a single note of Lust for Life, Diane chiding Renton about a woman being too young for him, a new 'Choose Life' monologue, a tense scene in a toilet. At one point Sick Boy tells Mark "Nostalgia. That's why you're here. You're a tourist in your own youth" and at times it seems like that's all it will amount to, a collection of references and in-jokes that we'll enjoy in the cinema but fail to leave a lasting impression. 

If T1 was about the self-destructive naiveté of youth, T2 is what happens when you reach your 40s and stop to look back at the wreckage of your life. Or, as a line that recurs throughout puts it: "First, there is an opportunity. Then, a betrayal". Sick Boy & Mark are caught in this cycle, complicated by their mutual interest in Veronica, Sick Boy's business-partner and sometime-girlfriend. Can they put old differences aside for long enough to get their latest scheme up and running? Will Begbie, violent and hate-fuelled as ever, catch up with Mark and take his (well-deserved) revenge?

For me though the heart of the film was Ewen Bremner's Spud. He's still using heroin "the only friend that never left me", has become estranged from his wife and son, and tries to find some sort of salvation or purpose in putting the group's former exploits down on paper. While the rest of the cast all have some central, intensely dislikeable feature about them, Spud is now as much as ever a lovable, good-hearted character swept along by some poor choices and bad influences.

If you're a fan of the original, this should be at worst a nostalgic/"where are they now" featurette and at best a new story you'll love as much as the first. If you haven't, then watch it first: whatever you think of this piece, T1 is Boyle's best work.