T2: Trainspotting
20 years after ripping off his mates and doing a runner with the money, Renton (Ewan McGregor) returns home from his comfortable life in Amsterdam. Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) is blackmailing people to fund his ailing pub, but mostly to pay for the copious amounts of cocaine he hoovers up. After managing to kick it for a while, Spud (Ewen Bremner) is back on the smack and unsurprisingly, Begbie (Robert Carlyle) is in prison.
I was just too young to see Trainspotting when it first came out, the perfect age to see it, which I did many times. It precisely captured the wild abandon of youth and what it was like to be that age in Britain at the time. It was the film that defined our generation. Those characters became part of the fabric of society and they were strangely relatable (mum, if you're reading this I don't mean literally, we weren't all on heroin).
So coming back always felt doomed to fail, we kept our fingers crossed but there was always that worry that it wouldn't deliver. Waiting so long has actually worked out in its favour - instead of getting The Further Adventures Of Trainspotting we get characters with 20 years of pain, sorrow, guilt and rage built up inside them.
Brilliantly performed by all involved and masterfully directed by Danny Boyle, it speaks to many of my generation in a different way now - it's about betrayal, regret, redemption, missed opportunities and the passing of time and youth.
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