That was then. This is now. Renton is running in the opening scene but it's on a machine and he collapses mid-session. Sobered, he picks himself up and returns to 'Brrrrrruh to offer retribution by paying back the money he stole for his own escape those decades past. No one's really having it except for Spud but with the aid of a few bruisey encounters he levels up in a way while his old pal Sick Boy (now a budding extortionist and aspirant brothel owner) keeps him close for his own retribution. Meanwhile the dark terror of the first tale, Begbie, breaks out of prison and won't take yes for an answer.
The plot will only give you a little here, though, as this film has more on its mind than the cogs and wheels of the three acts. The opposing forces are in place and will get to a showdown but while we're getting there we've got some time to reflect on the last twenty years. Everyone's older and a little defeated but striving on. Spud finds telling his tale offers a way out of the constant grinding pendulum between addiction and twelve-step meetings. Sick Boy and his young Bulgarian girlfriend think of getting the best knocking shop in Edinburgh as a kind of grant-funded start-up. Begbie takes his young adult son under his wing and into the mire of petty crime.
At one point Renton and Simon (Sick Boy) explain to Veronika how amazing everything was back then ("and no one was fat!") in front of a massive LED tv as their soundbites roll on to the screen like running tweets. At another Simon and Renton are watching the video for the Rubberbandits' dark and funny Dad's Best Friend (shown almost uninterrupted) and Renton, gazing as the middle aged actor in the clip miming the lyric transforms into a black eyed alien, asks, "what's this?" What is it? Cruelly, it's the bad boy that none of them were able to become because they kept all that choose-life stuff they were ridiculing at bay while the hard won gratification nullified their lives. The song is a kind of confession by an incorrigible reprobate whose violence and chaotic will yet make him a valuable asset to daily life. He's a bastard but impossible to hate as he is armed with charm. But this is no Renton nor even a Begbie. The dad's best friend is middle class and able to "choose the hookers he likes the best" because he's privileged. It takes a breath or two to sink in but as the pair of old friends watch the video and laugh at the clever cheek of the visuals we know they also understand that every second of the years that have brought them to this point have been a waste.
The nostalgia in the reminiscence scene, soured by the contemporary pop song, can only ever be a lie, not just a futile grasp at an art-directed past but an out and out fib. The good old days are for the winners only and there's just nothing left to win here. When the force of Begbie discovers Spud's retelling of their shared past he responds to the account of one of his own atrocities like a viking hearing his own saga sung back to him. His fury abates only to let the vanity that fuels it refuel. And nostalgia chews its own tail.
Director Danny Boyle takes all this further into poignancy by giving us a lot of footage of what will pass for the characters as boys. They are larking about at school, goofing for the camera and then we see where they've gone. It's like a deep gravity version of Seven Up a few minutes at a time. More, all the references to the 1995 film like Renton's update on the "choose life" monologue or the laughter on the bonnet of the breaking car give us all pause who were fans of the first film and bid us turn the camera around, selfie-style, and look before we judge. Boyle's return to his chief triumph, then, does have a point and was clearly worth making but I wonder if it is not too precise, too comfy then confronting for its guaranteed fans to deal with and perhaps too embarrassingly sour for those younger who might too easily triumph in its candour.
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