MOVIE REVIEW – Choose nostalgia. Choose your memory of the nineties, when you were young or even a kid. Choose the reminiscence of watching the first Trainspotting, the movie theater, where you saw it, the girlfriend, with who you saw it and with who you were at that time. Choose the same crazy and stylish ambiance, the extravagant scenes, the young rebel characters – everything which made Trainspotting such a cult movie. I chose something else. I chose to watch T2 Trainspotting instead.

 

What happens, when you are fortysomething, and you have no family, no kids, just some rather shady existence and memories of the past? The same thing, which is shown in Danny Boyle’s follow-up to his 1996’s cult classic: Trainspotting. Remorses. Nostalgia. Musings on the past. The youngsters of Trainspotting are grown older, and that didn’t make them happier.

Depression era?

No, “depression” would be a strong word, but our main heroes indeed became rather unhappy middle-aged guys, having a rather loser life. Mark Renton (Ewan McGreagor) goes back to Edinburgh, a bit downtrodden and nostalgic. Nobody really likes him here anymore, since (if you remember) he stole some drug money at the end Trainspotting – money, which should have been shared, but he took everything instead. He has no real existence in neither in Amsterdam, his “new” city, nor Edinburgh, his old hometown.

His old pal, Sick Boy (Johnny Lee Miller) – still on cocaine – became a shady and rather despicable blackmailer and also owns now a bar, where almost nobody goes for a drink. Spud (Ewen Bremner) – still on heroine, still a complete looser – is thinking to kill himself as not to be an embarrassment to his wife and kid.Begbie (Robert Carlyle) is getting out of prison using a surprisingly smart (at least for him) method and swears to have his vengeance on Renton.The only new notable character is Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova), Sick Boy’s young girlfriend and partner in crime. She’s perhaps the only breath of fresh into the movie.

No “lust for life” anymore

Don’t get me wrong: T2 Trainspotting is a good movie, but don’t expect it to have the same kind of energy and frantic, yet genius style, which made the first Trainspotting such a cult classic. The pace is much slower, and the different cuts into the life of the well-known, older character are put in together without the visual flair and panache which characterized Danny Boyle of old. Don’t expect anything like the scene, where McGregor was crawling out of a toilet bowl in a heroin-addled nightmare. While this new Trainspotting has its own charm, it’s still sucked out of life compared to the first movie.

Does this make the movie bad? On the contrary, it’s still funny to see those deadbeats who have sunk back into their old routines now that the promise of the first film’s events has not come to life. And while both Renton and Sick Boy ceased to be the lovable punks of old – only to became bitter small time criminals in their forties with a middle life crisis to boot – they are still well-shaped and interesting characters.

Begbie – played by an excellent Robert Carlyle once again – is still a dangerous and aggressive madman and he represents a true menace to Renton. Spud is stupid and funny as always, Ewen Bremner once again shows his comical talent. The only missed opportunity represents itself in the character of Diane (Kelly Macdonald), who from the both funny and pretty girl of the first movie became a boring lawyer here and has only a small part in the movie. It’s a shame; I expected more from her in T2 Trainspotting.

Slow motion and Flashback FM

There’s also a problem of pace, and the script feels loosely thrown together. John Hodges’s script, adapted loosely from Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting follow-up Porno, is more a series of set-pieces, as Renton slowly rekindles his connections with his connections with his old hometown city and life within.

Some scenes are very funny, including an outrageous sequence when Renton and Sick Boy (Miller) try to pickpocket customers of a Protestant pub and start a sectarian chant about deaths of Catholics, which was so long a center of Scottish identity, is now borderline irrelevant. But the script feels underdeveloped, with both plot and characters botched together: Carlyle’s Begbie was a rebellious cowboy in the first film; here he’s a cipher for unrestricted rage.

There’s also an enormous amount of flashbacks in the movie, but it only serves as to demonstrate, how this new world and its old heroes fails to truly come back to life.

Spud’s true calling

The tonal shift in the sequel compared to the original means that, although there are plenty of moments of savage humor, the highs are just not quite so high anymore. There’s a melancholic maturity, however, which is satisfying in its own way.

Like the first film, T2 is structured episodically, like a string of slightly disjointed stoner anecdotes. What’s new here is an elegant device which brings Spud to the front and center of the film. To finally quit heroin, he follows Renton’s advice and tries to replace one addiction with another… which I don’t want to spoil. Thanks to this smart plot device, T2 Trainspotting is closing smart the whole universe of Trainspotting.

-BadSector-