This supercharged 1996 story of drugs, violence and growing up has lost none of its edge ahead of the release of sequel T2

Prior to the guys’ Take-That-style reunion in the forthcoming sequel T2, here is a very welcome big-screen rerelease of Danny Boyle’s original Trainspotting, 21 years on. It holds up terrifically well. This movie was the first, maybe the only successful 90s British attempt at answering films like Goodfellas or Pulp Fiction; it has a version of their spirit and power – and matches them for hardcore violence, horror and drugs. But John Hodge’s screenplay, taken from the novel by Irvine Welsh, brings in a grittily British kind of social-realist pessimism. Watching it again, especially during the periodic “family” scenes in pubs after court appearances and funerals, I thought of Ken Loach’s Poor Cow.

Trainspotting is supercharged with sulphurous humour and brutal recklessness: it charges at you like...