By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Johnny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle, Kelly Macdonald, Anjela Nedyalkova, James Cosmo, Irvine Welsh and Simon Weir.
Rating: Excellent.
Academy Award Winning Director Danny Boyle brings “T2 Trainspotting”, the sequel of the 1996 film that launched his career and like the first film delivers again.
Based on the novel by Irvine Welsh and set up twenty years after the events of the first film, the movie centers on Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) a Scottish ex junkie who resides now in Amsterdam.
He decides to go back to Edinburgh to make peace with Daniel “Spud” Murphy (Ewen Bremner) who continues with his struggles with heroin and Simon “Sick Boy” Williamson (Johnny Lee Miller) who not only continues with his cocaine addiction but now is in the blackmailing business with her girlfriend Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova).
At the beginning they are both still angry since Renton stole their money from them in the first film but eventually they put aside their differences.
The major problem is when Francis “Franco” Begbie (Robert Carlyle) escapes from prison and wants revenge against Renton.
Now Renton will need to avoid Begbie at any cost before it´s too late and immediately this will be an opportunity for Renton to redeem himself.
Danny Boyle directed another winner with T2 Trainspotting and like the first movie this had an interesting premise and a very good screenplay written by John Hodge.
One of the things that worked in this sequel was the fact that there is still the essence of the first film, although the plot is slightly different than the first film.
Besides being drug addicts, the characters from “Trainspotting” are filled with humor and you feel for them specially for the character of Renton, who constantly gets himself into trouble like the other three.
The directing by Danny Boyle was sharp and the cast delivered very good performances.
Like I mentioned before in this space, I´m not a big fan of flashbacks but here there were necessary since 20 years have passed after the events of the first film and it´s very easy to forget those moments.
I did feel the movie was a little bit slow for moments but that didn´t bother me at all.
I laughed very hard with this film like I did with the first one when I saw it twenty years ago and I have to say that it´s one of my favorite films from 1996.
John Hodge wrote another great screenplay and a very interesting ending that was completely unexpected.
I never expected that there was going to be a sequel for a movie that it´s considered an icon but it did work and I was very surprised with the result since movies that were very good when they do sequels most of them do not succeed. This one did and delivered good results.
I prefer more the first film which not only the length plays a major role but the overall of the story was very well set up.
Danny Boyle did again an amazing job with T2 Trainspotting and I highly recommend it but I suggest to watch the first movie if you can since you can remember the events of the first film. If you haven´t seen the first movie than definitely see it before watching this sequel.