Day 154 - T2 Trainspotting



Day 154          T2 Trainspotting [2017]
                          
Screenplay                    John Hodge
Based on                       ‘Porno’ and ‘Trainspotting’ by Irvine Welsh
Director                         Danny Boyle
Cinematography            Anthony Dod Mantle
Music                            Rick Smith
Leads                            Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle, Anjela Nedyalkova, Kelly Macdonald, Shirley Henderson, James Cosmo
Production                     Film4, Creative Scotland, Cloud Eight Films, DNA Films, Decibel Films

IMDb                                 7.2/10
Rotten Tomatoes                79%

What a let-down. I think the critics have been kind just because it’s Danny Boyle, Ewan McGregor and Trainspotting. The original film was so extraordinary and fresh, trippy and yet real, that it had audiences and critics alike gushing over it. It is a film that needed no sequel. I am tempted to just review the original and ignore this film – which is essentially just a reminder of the first film anyway – filled with flashbacks and references that we don’t really need. You can tell that Boyle and McGregor are now Hollywood bigshots as they spray their scents all over this in making a film that is way more PG than the original and much closer to the tracks (had to get a train pun in somewhere). We re-join the gang twenty years later as Renton (McGregor) returns to Edinburgh after a minor heart attack. He is in search of nostalgia, as all of us probably were whilst watching it. They certainly gave it to us but not in the right way. This film seemed to be about middle age hopelessness and revenge, rather than the nihilism of youth and addiction that the original gave us. The plot was boring, bogged down in reverie towards the original and the characters former lives. Spud’s (Bremner) plotline gave me the only glimmer of hope as we saw him go cold turkey and start writing, his building the sauna an allegory for re-building his life. I think it all came down to them trying to do too much: remembering the past whilst also bringing in a new story and modern themes. It was filmed in a similar way, the freeze frames, awkward angles and super-8 all came into it accompanied well by the dreamlike synth-filled music. There was so much potential for the British film we all needed, from a brilliant director with a brilliant cast, but it fell flat on its face. In the mixer with all the other shitty generic films. Watch the first one and make yourself feel better.

Acting                             3 / 4
Writing                            2 / 4
Cinematography           2.5 / 4
Music                           3.5 / 4
HWF rating                 2 / 4

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