A sequel to Trainspotting could have been as bad an idea as picking up your old heroin habit. The 1996 movie was a perfect and efficient statement, a coming-of-age story told through the prism of drugs and petty crimeâAmerican Graffiti shot through with skag and Scottish brogues.
Director Danny Boyleâs flamboyant filmmaking approach generally veers toward visual and sonic assault, but in spite of this, T2 Trainspotting looks inward rather than outward (and donât worry, that clunky title is probably the worst thing about it). Rather than a traditional sequel, itâs closer to something like Richard Linklaterâs Before trilogy, in which we revisit familiar characters at different turning points in their lives. In T2âs case, the characters are nothing short of indelible, although you should have at least a passing familiarity with the first Trainspotting before embarking on the second.
In T2, Mark Renton (McGregor) hasnât been seen since he ripped off his best matesâheâs started a new life in Amsterdam, but a coronary episode and his motherâs death send him back to Edinburgh. Spud (Ewen Bremner) is still caught in the cycle of addiction, as hapless and pitiable as ever. Begbie (Carlyle) has spent most of the intervening 20 years behind bars, although his psychotic tendencies havenât diminished one bit. And bleached-blond Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) prefers to be called Simon nowâand heâs changed his drug of choice from heroin to cocaineâbut he hasnât given up his grifterâs ways, roping in his maybe-girlfriend Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova) to some tawdry blackmail schemes.
Thereâs tons of plot in T2âthe four men, who forgive and donât forgive each other to varying degrees, embark on a series of shady endeavorsâbut very little of it matters. What does matter are the characters and performances, which are superb, particularly Bremnerâs Spud, whose idiotic façade hides a poetic soul, and Millerâs Simon, a figure of agitated narcissism and continually wounded pride. Carlyleâs Begbie, naturally, is just as hilarious and terrifying as heâs ever been. McGregor might be the weak linkâyou can tell this guyâs been a pampered movie star for the past 20 years. It does work with his character, though, as Renton is someone whoâs wholly disassociated himself from his past.
T2 overplays its hand at times, and Boyle seems particularly frenzied, cramming far too many visual ideas into whatâs primarily a character-driven story. He incorporates footage from the original Trainspotting, which sometimes works and sometimes doesnât. Screenwriter John Hodge, too, juggles a few unnecessary elements, although he retains the essence of novelist Irvine Welshâs source material. (T2 is based partly on unused sections of Welshâs original novel and the 2002 sequel Porno, but itâs mostly newly concocted stuff.) Nonsensical sequences sit alongside really great ones, and the filmâs reliance on Veronika makes the whole thing a bit wobbly. Perhaps Boyle and Hodge sensed the need to inject a woman into this very laddish story, but Veronikaâa gorgeous Bulgarian a full two decades younger than these Scottish loutsâis a pure figment, a wise and magical hooker with a heart of gold who acts as the balm to these man-boysâ troubled relationships.
Still, what T2 does well, it does astonishingly well. More than a few scenes are hysterically funny, and more than a few escapades are white-knuckled fun. But what sticks with me are the things I never thought Iâd get out of a Trainspotting movieâthe smart, emotional things it has to say about friendship and the passage of time. It knows how much it sucks to get old, and how hard it is to change our nature. But it also shows us, through these remarkably drawn characters, that thereâs always a compulsion to keep trying to get it right.
