T2 Trainspotting (Danny Boyle)

[Grouchy]

http://cdn3-www.comingsoon.net/assets/uploads/gallery/trainspotting-2-set/trainspotting.jpg

[Grouchy]

Making a sequel to a milestone classic 20 years later is usually a bold enterprise. Making a sequel to an indie blast like Trainspotting which revolves around youth (both in the story and on the moment in time of its creators) seems more like something doomed for failure, which is oddly fitting to the personalities of the four characters now returning. However, T2 (possibly a jokey send-up to James Cameron) mostly succeeds in providing a heartfelt reunion with the bunch of losers and sociopaths we got to love during the first one. It's a movie that's almost completely dependent on the reverence for the original (there are all kinds of references from the winky-winky to the re-staging of key scenes) and, having read no Irvine Welsh but knowing about the existence of Porno, maybe I expected a work that was a bit more independent from its source. Ironically, the most effective plot threads are the ones that deal directly with Renton's betrayal and Begbie's desire for revenge.

Robert Carlyle is particularly effective here, recreating Begbie as close to full-fledged psycho as he can get without completely devolving into caricature and at the same time eliciting a strange sympathy for the character. There are other highlights here, though. A sequence with Renton and Sick Boy robbing the patrons of a unionist pub comes close to capturing the contagious enthusiasm of the original. And the scene inmediately afterwards with the pair doing coke and talking about George Best is the best visual depiction of the state of mind caused by that substance I've ever seen this side of Scorsese. I also like the ending and the performance of Ewen Bremmer, who also exaggerates the visual gestures that made his Spud famous.

In short, the soundtrack and Boyle's impressive visual style are there. The cast is there. There's more comedy and less poetry this time around, and at times the film delves into an analysis of middle age and male camaraderie that doesn't directly relate to the themes of drug addiction or disenchantment with the world. But Boyle and his writer Hodges are well aware of it. I don't feel they are trying to recapture the magic so much as comment on it from their adult perspective, by providing commentary about one's life choices and where do they lead us. This is particularly evident in the dialogue of Renton and Begbie's final confrontation.

The one thing I actively disliked was the subplot with the prostitute. I don't know if it comes from Porno or not, but I didn't buy it for a second. I liked it when she was part of Sick Boy's scams, but the character just doesn't have any depth and so her massive amount of screentime seems hollow. I was far more engaged by Kelly McDonald's one-minute scene which, surprisingly, led nowhere.

[Henry Gale]

Feels weird to be only the second vote on a movie that's been our banner for a few weeks, and has been playing in my city for as long. I'd just been too busy to see it 'til a few days ago, but so glad I managed to.

I think it's a beautiful movie. Just a effervescently somber film in a state of tranquil danger, both stylistically and thematically, with Boyle and Hodge's storytelling propelled by more of the glowing, neon, perfectly saturated cinematography-porn Dod Mantle and Boyle conjured up for Trance.

Though I think it's a very good one, the word "sequel" just doesn't feel right. It just feels, much like for the characters in it, a revisiting of people and places, a resolving of relationships and a reminiscing of faded cultural and social staples of a time, sharpening the focus on how they shaped the people then all the way up until now, and as a result, it becomes a stirring completion of the previous film's ideas.

I've always liked the original's ending, but it is a bit of an easy, idealized, open-ended resolution for the sort of happiness (for Renton and Spud) and comeuppance (for Sick Boy and Begbie) that story can have. Which totally reflects the sort of more-simplistic worldview a "hero" character like McGregor's might've had at his age, but now that everyone has lived with what happened -- in addition to all the other things we've gone through in the world since -- it's not as simple. The formerly shaded blacks and whites of what's right and wrong between them and the world itself don't feel the same, and this movie is about the characters clinging onto what felt best about the past as they face the crisis of their uncertain futures, and that shapes the tone of the film's own existence in the best way. It desperately searches for those corners of the Scotland of the 1996 film that haven't change or been all-around gentrified in the real-world to find a way of feeling at home as a sequel.

It's also a very distinct film from the original, despite using a surprising amount of footage and call-back imagery from it. And I think it's more than things like Boyle's style understandably having changed, or the actors' appearances, it now being digital cinematography, or it having been twenty years of filmmaking to subconsciously package any film made now in a different way. It's just exactly how you'd want and assume the worlds of any characters to be two decades later: having moved on both with them and without them.

[TGM]

Oh hey, this is finally opening in town this weekend!

[Ivan Drago]

Oh hey, this is finally opening in town this weekend!

Same here. I'm pumped.

[Mal]

I was excited to see this... but then I remembered about 10 minutes in that I wasn't a big fan of the original- and by the close I felt like I had wasted a few hours. Whyyyy did I do this to myself. It was a film, the end. ��

[transmogrifier]

I thought this was hugely disappointing. It looks like ass, is edited with little to no rhythm and there is no real story to be told here - the scams and the revenge are all so rote and meaningless. The thing that saves it is the nostalgic melancholy (intended or not) of having a ragbag group fall back into each other's orbit looking to contextualize their past.

[Dukefrukem]

Loved the music, the intro, the reintroduction to the characters. Having just re-watched the first, it was great to see how Boyle has evolved as a filmmaker. I thought the nightclub "no more Catholics left" was hilariously Doyle. But the rest of the film struggles to find a purpose to keep these characters together.

[Henry Gale]

It looks like ass, is edited with little to no rhythm and there is no real story to be told here...

Um, wut.

I'd go as far as to say that this, along with Trance, are my favourite-looking digitally-shot films.. ever? Deakins' recent work is obviously gorgeous but often also a bit of cold feel with a bit of a barrier for me with their narrowed palettes, and any other great examples that come to mind still have some asterisks and other hindrances I can't forget. Boyle and Dod Mantle's two most recent collaborations have so much energy, life and vigor to them. If it wasn't so gripping I'd get mad at them for showing off so much.

[transmogrifier]

Disagree entirely. The shot selection, editing, mise en scene is clunky as fuck and it just looks ugly to the bone.

[Ezee E]

Definitely a Boyle movie. I'm a big fan of his aesthetic, editing, and use of colors when it's working. The thing is, the characters and story don't feel like they belong to it. The plotting seems forced to give them things to do. This could be one of the more unneeded sequels that I can think of. Boyle's energy and McGregor's acting are kind of wasted.

What a disappointment.

[Peng]

Feels strangely like an epilogue, or a third act that never was to the first film. Its unshapeliness (Begbie has some affecting moments but really feels like a tangent to the other three) is the biggest stumbling block, a very straight-line story that somehow lasts longer and never has the cumulative power of the first's colorful detours, making it a bit weightless. I guess though that even if Boyle should tighten it more, that weightlessness still seems apt for a film about chasing after a past.

In my recent rewatch of the original, I found Renton's drug habit being partly a stand-in for his fear of adulthood pretty poignant, and this film is almost nothing but that, for better and worse. It's the ultimate of both characters and film wallowing in nostalgia that just barely skirts past being too indulgent, countered by Boyle's kinetic style and four terrific performances. The story might not be memorable, but the feeling of desperation lingers on, and characters glimpsing (or trying to replicate) their past in everything they do can often be devastatingly sad and haunting in isolated moments. As someone who just like not love the original, and like this sequel a bit less, I feel if Boyle managed to combine the two films together (either making this story a third act proper since I found the first one petered off slightly towards the end, or flashed back and forth between timelines), that powerful contrast might make for one of my favorite films ever. 7/10