‘It’s a Homecoming Film’: Danny Boyle on <em>T2 Trainspotting</em>
This Friday will mark the release of one of the more unusual sequels of recent years, T2 Trainspotting, Danny Boyle’s follow-up to the 1996 film that largely put him on the map as a director. That film, based loosely on the novel by Irvine Welsh, was a giddily stylish picaresque about a group of twentysomething friends scoring heroin at every opportunity in Edinburgh. A full 20 years later, the fellows have now slowed down (and sobered up) some with age. T2 reunites the principal cast of Ewan McGregor (Renton), Ewen Bremner (Spud), Jonny Lee Miller (Sick Boy), and Robert Carlyle (Begbie) and is written, like its predecessor, by John Hodge. (Kelly Macdonald, who made her debut in the earlier movie, has a sharp cameo.)
fans will recall that it ended with Renton absconding with £16,000 that he and the others had made in a drug deal (though he left £4,000 behind for Spud). Now, after all these years, he’s returned to Edinburgh to face the friends he betrayed. I’ll have a review on Friday (short version: it’s good!), but in the meantime I had a chance to
