8 reasons why diehard fans will love Trainspotting 2

Ahhh, Renton. The man with chiseled good looks and a warm heart, who just so happens to love ripping off his mates. Twenty years have passed but nothing’s changed; our chief protagonist is still struggling between being a nice guy and an absolute wanker.

Having nicked £16k off his friends and walked out into the world a man free of the constraints of heroin and Leith at the end of Trainspotting, we now rejoin his life as it begins falling apart again. His relationship is in tatters, he missed his own mother’s funeral, he’s become the very thing that he hates (he’s been handling ‘stock management for the retail sector’ for a living) and as he returns to Scotland to start over, he finds out he still loves a bit of mischief.

It seems his old friends bring out the worst in him and he becomes as two-faced as ever, while maintaining the bonds that hold the old gang together. Illustrating this perfectly are two contrasting scenes: one where Sickboy tries to drown him with Coca Cola and another where he pours water all over Spud’s dehydrating face during an epiphanic jog.

At one point he proclaims, “I’m 46 and I’m fucked!” And therein lies one of the central themes of the film: the crisis of middle age masculinity. While the female characters are all getting on with life (Spud’s ex girlfriend Gail is raising their teenage boy successfully, Renton’s ex Diane has become a lawyer), the men are deluded and failing miserably. Will they ever learn? Watch the film and find out.