Spot-on
‘T2’ fulfills craving for fans of original
You can’t go home again, cried ThomasWolfe. But you can try (that’s why we have sequels), and you can have some nasty, nostalgic fun doing it. Over 20 years since they captured lightning in a bottle, the “Trainspotting” boys from Edinburgh, one of them “sick” and another a girl, are back. Cue the soundtrack. Some things have changed in “T2 Trainspotting.” Some things have remained the same. Begbie aka Franco (Robert Carlyle), remains a violent psychopath. He is in Her Majesty’s Prison and in lieu of parole, escapes. Spud (Ewen Bremner), the suicidal soul of this film, remains a lifelong junkie, and his reunion with Renton (Ewan McGregor), who returns after running out on his friends, taking money he was supposed to share at the end of the first film, is startling in its comic grotesqueness. Coke fiend Simon (Jonny Lee Miller) of the bleached hair is running a sordid extortion scam, using Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova), a beautiful young immigrant from Eastern Europe, as bait. He and she dream of opening a “spa” (aka brothel). Diane (Kelly Macdonald), who was a randy 15-year-old schoolgirl in the original film, is a public prosecutor now.
When Renton returns home after the death of his mother (Eileen Nicholas in the original film), orbits inevitably and terribly intersect. The plot will also present us with a parody of a father-son reunion when Begbie tries to enlist his only child into his “glorious” life of crime. Moreover, Begbie embarks on a quest to track down and kill Renton.
When “Trainspotting” was released in 1996, it was more than just a Brit import. Based on the novel by Irvine Welsh adapted to the screen by John Hodge and directed by Englishman Danny Boyle (“Shallow Grave”), who has since won an Academy Award for “Slumdog Millionaire” and rejuvenated the zombie genre with “28 Days Later,” the film was a generational anthem, a scabrous, nihilistic, dead-baby-haunted heroin dream celebrating sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll and ultra-violence, as well as an artistic manifesto from Boyle.
In only one weirdly beautiful sequence, Renton shoots up in a filthy nightclub toilet, dives into the bowl and takes a cleansing underwater swim in strange crystalline waters. The film’s use of music, including Iggy Pop’s pounding punk anthem “Lust for Life” and Lou Reed’s addiction ode “Perfect Day,” might be described as junkie-existentialist MTV.
This sequel, which celebrates the music of the late John Barry, cannot match the first. It inevitably retreads some of it and does not really stand on its own. But it’s an expressive palate cleanser for Boyle after the visually bereft “Steve Jobs” and must-see cinema for all “Trainspotting” fans. (“T2 Trainspotting” contains profanity, drug use, sexually graphic images, violence and nudity.)