SPOILER ALERT: the following article contains massive spoilers, including the ending. If you have not yet seen the movie, proceed at your own risk, or better, come back to this article later!
First there was an opportunity, then there was a betrayal. Twenty years later, Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) returns to the only place that he can ever call home. There waiting for him are old buddies Spud (Ewen Bremner), Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) and Begbie (Robert Carlyle). Sorrow, loss, joy, vengeance, hatred, love, fear, regret, self-destruction and mortal danger are also all lined up and ready to welcome him.
SPOILERS AHEAD
T2 Trainspotting Plot Summary and Synopsis
Twenty years after stealing £8,000 in drug money from his friends and making a new life in Amsterdam, 46-year old Mark Renton suffers a heart attack in a gym. Though now two decades sober from heroin, he is in the process of divorce and imminent redundancy.
On the brink of a mid-life crisis and depressed, he decides to take a nostalgic trip back to Edinburgh. Daniel “Spud” Murphy has returned to a cycle of heroin addiction after separating from his wife, Gail, and losing custody of his teenage son, Fergus, whom he fathered shortly after Renton left. Simon “Sick Boy” Williamson abuses cocaine, runs a failing pub, and engages in blackmail schemes with his Bulgarian girlfriend, Veronika.
Francis “Franco” Begbie is serving a lengthy prison sentence, and attacks his lawyer after having his sentence extended for another five years.
Renton visits Spud just in time to save him from a suicide attempt. He offers to help Spud overcome his addictions. Renton visits Sick Boy at his pub, where Sick Boy, still furious from being ripped off, attacks Renton.
Afterwards, Renton meets Veronika and pays Sick Boy back his original share of the money. Sick Boy is not impressed; he informs Veronika that he plans to take revenge.
Begbie escapes from prison via the ruse of a self-inflicted injury and returns to his estranged wife June’s flat. He meets his college-bound son, Frank Jr., whom he forces to join him in burgling houses. He ridicules his son’s choice of studying hotel management instead of carrying out criminal activities.
Begbie visits Sick Boy, who pretends to have heard of Renton living in Amsterdam and promises to provide Begbie with a false passport so he can travel to the Netherlands to exact his revenge.
Renton, Sick Boy and Veronika fraudulently apply for a £100,000 European Union business development grant to turn the upper floor of the pub into the business venture he had promised Veronika, a brothel under the guise of a sauna.
Veronika, however, finds herself attracted to Renton, and they begin an affair. Spud, meanwhile, joins in the renovation and also befriends Veronika, who inspires him to write his memoirs.
One of Sick Boy’s blackmail targets reports him to the police, and Renton seeks legal advice from his ex-girlfriend, Diane Coulston, now a solicitor. The proceeds of their crimes are quickly used up in legal fees and Sick Boy’s cocaine addiction.
Renton manages to escape from Begbie after a chance encounter at a nightclub. Renton and Sick Boy are kidnapped by Doyle, owner of a rival brothel, who drives them to the countryside and intimidates them into abandoning their scheme, leaving them to walk back to Edinburgh naked.
Begbie visits Spud, and in reading his memoirs, discovers that Renton left Spud his share of the money. Veronika arrives and Begbie steals her phone, which he uses to text Renton and Sick Boy to come to the pub at midnight.
Veronika takes Spud to her apartment and asks him to leave with her, promising him half of the £100,000. Spud is afraid he will spend it on heroin again, so she offers to give his share to Gail and Fergus.
He helps transfer the money to Veronika’s account by forging Renton’s and Sick Boy’s signatures. After reading another excerpt of Spud’s writings about their encounter with Begbie’s alcoholic father in the derelict Leith Central railway station, Begbie visits June’s flat for the last time, apologising to Frank Jr. for his abuse and telling him that he (Frank Jr.) will be a better man than Begbie or his father were.
At the pub, Spud arrives too late to warn Renton and Sick Boy of Begbie’s ploy. Begbie knocks Sick Boy unconscious and chases Renton across the upstairs floor.
He throws Renton through the floorboards, leaving him hanging by the neck from electrical wiring; Begbie tries to strangle him, but Sick Boy douses him with pepper spray and saves Renton. Begbie pulls out a sawn-off shotgun and tries to kill them both, but Spud hits him with a toilet bowl.
They leave Begbie in the boot of Sick Boy’s car outside the prison. Veronika returns to her son in Bulgaria. Spud puts together his book of memoirs and mends his relationship with Fergus and Gail, who suggests the title “Trainspotting”. Renton and Sick Boy resume their old friendship.
Renton moves back into his now widowed father’s home and embraces him in reconciliation, before going to his bedroom and dancing to a remix of “Lust for Life”.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0).