Director Danny Boyle returns to the world of Scottish heroin addiction he first explored in 1996’s Trainspotting with most of the original cast returning to see where these characters are 20 years after the events of the original film.

Sequels that gestate years after the original can often be a mixed lot. Cannon Films Death Wish 2 comes to mind as a sequel of a critically acclaimed film that was just a cash-in that missed what made the original film work. But for every Death Wish 2, there’s films like Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise trilogy, which examines how time changes people and they grow because of circumstances. Boyle’s T2 Trainspotting is more in line with Linklater’s film; an honest revisitation of these characters and how time and circumstance has and hasn’t changed them.

We begin with Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) returning to Edinburgh 20 years after the events of Trainspotting. He has just suffered a heart attack and a divroce and is in the throes of a mid-life crisis which leads him back home searching for a compass in himself. While there, he revisits his former mates like Spud (Ewen Brenmer), whom he encounters in the midst of a suicide attempt and whose life he saves. Spud reveals he spent the 4,000 pounds Renton left him on drugs and it ruined his life. Similarly, Begbie (Robert Carlyle) went to prison and dreams of one day escaping and killing Mark. Sick Boy (Johnny Lee Miller) runs small time scams with his Bulgarian girlfriend Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova) and plots how he can take revenge on Mark now that he has come back to Scotland as he feigns befriending him for the purposes of redeveloping a pierside hotel as a brothel.

T2 Trainspotting largely works because Boyle and his cast are sincere in their revisiting these characters. Boyle weaves passages and scenes from the original film in very compelling and artful ways that show us the directions these characters could have taken, but didn’t; whether because the right path was too hard or they were too lazy. The soundtrack informs the film just as heavily as the original films did and “Lust for Life” looms over a film where characters nullify their emotions so they don’t feel anything. Overall, the film just clicks and it is an emotionally affecting film that reminds you why the original Trainspotting was so good at the same time.

T2 Trainspotting is a worthy sequel to Boyle’s film. More than that, its a film that makes you want to keep revisiting these characters to see where they ultimately live up. They feel real and the film is not just a nostalgia trip back to the 1990’s.