T2 Trainspotting

T2 Trainspotting (2017) is set twenty years after the first film and was made with the same cast. Renton comes back to Edinburgh from Amsterdam. Spud is still using, Sick Boy has gone into blackmail, Begbie is in prison and about to get out. At the end of the first film Renton cheated all three and left with the money; now he returns and has to face them. The subject is nostalgia itself. The characters talk about the past constantly and the film presents that as an illness: they have been telling the same story for twenty years because nothing happened afterwards. Boyle uses real footage from the first film. When a character looks at something, their younger self from twenty years earlier cuts in, and it works alongside the actors' actual ageing. There is a new version of the famous speech from the first film, this time about contemporary life. It draws partly on Irvine Welsh's novel Porno but departs from it considerably. Spud's section is the emotional centre; he starts writing, and what he writes turns out to be the stories from the first film. The soundtrack uses the original's songs in reworked versions. It makes no sense without the first film. It runs 117 minutes. Good for: anyone who liked the first, character drama, and Boyle. Less good for: there are drugs and violence, and anyone expecting the first film's energy will find a wearier film.