Retro drug

‘T2 Trainspotting’ gives you both a nostalgic high and bit of a hangover

Choose life? Well, choose to put on 20 years of it, anyway. ¶ Picking up two decades after the events of the generally excellent 1996 black comedy drama by director Danny Boyle, “Trainspotting,” “T2 Trainspotting” shows what time does to everyone, from the actors and their respective characters to Boyle and returning writer John Hodge. ¶ While largely enjoyable — it’s fun to be with this group of very flawed friends again, the first order of business for many a sequel — “T2” is less raw, less focused and feels less urgent than its predecessor. ¶ In other words, it’s exactly what we should have expected.

And heroin addiction, the driver of the story in “Trainspotting,” is gone — mostly — but other problems have surfaced in its long, damaging wake.

The opening shots of the film are in a health club, where long-haired, seemingly fit Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) is running on a treadmill. He soon has some sort of health incident that causes him to fly backwards and crash onto the floor.

Mark, who has been living in Amsterdam and hasn’t seen his mates since ripping them off after their successful drug deal at the end of the first film, returns to Edinburgh, Scotland. There, his pal Spud (Ewen Bremner) — the one he reimbursed after lifting the group’s drug money — has continued to struggle with heroin, aka “skag,” even if during a particularly funny early scene he blames a series of misfortunes on daylight savings time.

When Mark goes to Spud’s apartment, in fact, Spud has just penned a letter to the mother of his son, telling her he is sorry for being such a disappointment to them and that he is ending his life. Mark intervenes, however, and an initially furious Spud claims that Mark, having already ruined his life by giving an addict 4,000 pounds to spend, has now ruined his death.

While they quickly patch things up, it’s not so easy for Mark when it comes to Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), who now goes by Simon, and who has traded heroin use for cocaine and makes money by running a blackmailing operation with his girlfriend, Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova). Simon is still furious with Mark for ripping him off, and he and Simon exchange fits in the failing family pub Simon is running. While Mark eventually thinks they, too, have gotten past his betrayal, Simon tells Veronika he plans to rope Mark in as deeply as possible before in turn betraying him.

And then there’s Robert Carlyle’s violent hothead Francis “Franco” Begbie, who has been in prison since the events of “Trainspotting.” Turned down for parole — which, of course, he tries to take out on his lawyer during a visit to the prison — Franco executes a successful plan to escape. Fortunately for Mark, Franco is unaware he is back in Scotland, at least initially.

As “T2” rolls on, Mark and Simon go into shady business together, Spud finds something productive in which to channel his energy and Franco tries to teach his teenage son how to be a successful criminal, completely ignoring the lad’s desires to continue with his hotel-management schooling.

Meanwhile, Boyle implements a number of fun visual tricks — carefully timed frozen frames and the use of subtitles when those Scottish accents get incredibly thick and the use of slang becomes especially prevalent and other on-screen graphics. Most of it works well.

On the other hand, he and Hodge seem overly concerned with echoing moments from the first film. It rises to the point of distraction, especially with Boyle splicing in the shots from “Trainspotting” that connect with what’s happening in “T2.” Heaven forbid someone would miss a reference. (Relatedly, even though she isn’t remotely key to the story, they found a way to give Kelly MacDonald’s Diane, Mark’s young lover from “Trainspotting,” an appearance.)

For the most part, Hodge’s writing is solid, many of the characters getting a few fantastic lines. Of course, it’s possible some of those are lifted from “Porno,” Irvine Welsh’s 2002 sequel to his 1993 “Trainspotting” novel. (Unlike “T2,” “Porno” brings the characters together after only one decade apart, and it tells a different story. However, at least some backstory elements seem to have been borrowed by Hodge for this screenplay.)

TRISTAR PICTURES Simon, portrayed by Jonny Lee Miller, left, and Mark, played by Ewan McGregor, are back together — and in bad shape — in “T2 Trainspotting.”

TRISTAR PICTURES Robert Carlyle’s Begbie, right, goes crazy when he finds Ewan McGregor’s Mark in a bathroom stall next to his in a scene from “T2 Trainspotting.”