T2 Trainspotting [Blu-ray] [2017] [Region Free]

One of the few sequels that's as good if not better than the original

Conflicted nostalgia is the new drug in T2: Trainspotting. Director Danny Boyle’s dark-humored follow-up to the 1996 cult classic Trainspotting sees the gang return as dysfunctional as ever. The sequel, based in part on Irvine Welsh’s novels Trainspotting and its own sequel Porno, picks up back in Edinburgh twenty years after Renton, played again by Ewan McGregor, betrayed and robbed his friends of a £16,000 drug deal score. The film’s mantra “First, an opportunity—then, betrayal,” emphasizes the motives behind decisions made under the pressures of addiction and opportunity. Forgive, maybe. But forget? Never.Two decades after the gang’s abrupt dissolution we find Begbie the psychopath, reprised by Robert Carlyle, whose drug of choice is still chaos, escaping from prison hell-bent on seeking revenge against Renton for the betrayal.Jonny Lee Miller returns as Sick Boy, who, along with newcomer Anjela Nedyalkova, runs small-time blackmailing operation out of his failing business—a scarcely-visited bar in the city’s port neighborhood of Leith.Also back is Ewen Bremner as Spud, estranged from his son and the boy’s mother Gail, and still struggling with addiction but now without the vigor of his youth and the camaraderie of fellow addicts. “The world changes, people don’t,” Begbie tells him before the film’s climax.Upon his return to Edinburgh, Renton reconnects with Sick Boy and the old friends are quickly involved in a half-baked plan to open a brothel. The only thing missing is the capital, the same poison that destroyed the friendships in the first place.The new film is aware of its audience, and drops us off onto our own journey down memory lane as we watch it. Trainspotting almost seems to be a character in T2. Flashbacks to the young characters, both cut from the original and in new scenes, take us back to wherever we were in our lives when we saw the first film. Familiar settings, reconstructed moments, relics, and a new take on an old monologue by McGregor give us our own nostalgic moments as we watch the new troubles come around again. Together, the pair of films seem to be asking for another chance, one more shot at getting it right, another opportunity to choose life.“Be addicted,” a cleaned-up Renton tells Spud. “Just be addicted to something else.” The characters are searching for some elusive purpose with which to channel their addictive personalities and discover a less self-destructive path into their futures.Spud delves into writing, earning a promotion to the new film’s narrator, and pens some of Welsh’s lines from the novel on which the first film was based. In a way, the sequel is about the results of the first film, with a temporal distortion that only Boyle could deliver. It’s a new kind of self-referential move, post-meta. By the end, when Spud delivers his manuscript to Gail, the first film’s title Trainspotting is born.The new soundtrack thumps away in time with the action as the film progresses. And two iconic songs from the original film never let us forget the past as we watch the future unfold. Shadows of Iggy Pop and Underworld sit with us as we watch, subtly whispering reminders of the way things were. If you looked behind you in the dark auditorium though, you’d only see the faces of the other middle-aged viewers lost in their own nostalgic reveries, trying to connect the hazy dots of the past that led them into the theater.The self-referential aspect would be lost on viewers who have not seen the original, and its thin plot would only be mildly entertaining. Indeed, the intended audience seems to be those who have the perspective of twenty years or so to their own youth, and the memory of the original film at least vaguely still in their minds.But regardless of your memory, or whether you have anything in common with the characters in T2: Trainspotting, you’ll be forced to take an awkward step back from your own narrative and watch your story as it unfolds. T2 will make you look at the place you stand now with the frailty of someone who knows how lucky they are to have gotten this far. Ask yourself how you define the space between a less-than-perfect past and the uncertainty of an unknown future. If you can see clearly where you stand now, you’ll have your answer.

Honestly I was completely high on the ceiling watching both of these movies back to back and it was like aging rapidly, and watching your loved ones also age rapidly and die, and in so doing having to come to terms with the inevitability of mortality and the gravity of the sins you've committed in the past, in just four hours. Then realizing, with some degree of anxiety or maybe even horror, that there's simultaneously an eternity left, everyone passing you by in uncatchable flashes, and even with all that time you somehow never get to share more than an infinitesimal fraction of any of their worlds. A raucous medley of brilliant joy, drowning sadness, possessed madness, and debilitating ennui, curiously and haphazardly motoring a long-recalled piece of heavy machinery for anywhere between a few decades and a fraction of a second.That being said, if in this experience, I happened to age as gracefully as Ewan MacGregor seems to have, I would probably ultimately be fine with all of that, no fightin.

I don't know how exactly I managed to go five years without knowing there was a sequel to Trainspotting (I must have watched the original roughly five times during that period!). Like any sequel, I was afraid it would be total shite, as the movie's Scottish characters might say. I thought, "How can they do a movie about those four friends? Mark Renton totally ripped the other three off at the end! He got clean, but he ripped them off. And Begbie got caught--with the armed robbery charge, plus whatever else they got him for as he was destroying that hotel room, he must still be in jail! How can this movie make any sense? Well, that was correct. They are NOT friends. Begbie IS in jail. Renton is back in Scotland, and finds Spud struggling...but perhaps all can be made well. But how can that work, when Begbie has just escaped, and has found his old friend Sick Boy? There is some great music--not as many killer tracks as the original, but it's very good. There's a surprising use of Queen's "Radio GaGa" during a weird dreamlike scene. Anyway, the point is, if you loved Trainspotting, you MUST see this. I now watch the two movies back to back every time. One of the few great sequels ever made.

Sick Boy sums this movie up in a line to Renton, as they again head out into the heather, paying homage to the departed: "You're a tourist in your own youth." That line could have been delivered dead into the camera, as it pretty well nails this film's audience, myself included.I like T2 because it does not pretend to be anything other than it is: a return to, and meditation on, the earlier film, and how time has played its ravages on it's protagonists, and on the film's very themes. Sometimes it could even be accused of wallowing: but Trainspotting was always about wallowing anyway. The difference is that now the flippant, almost bracing nihilism of youth has given away to the sorrow and horror at the void that is middle age. Renton didn't use to need reasons, because he had heroin, then he realized that heroin would kill him and he decided he didn't want to die. But he never found reasons to live. Spud does want to die because he still doesn't know how to live. Simon/Sick Boy remains a man on the make, except he's never made it. And then there's Begbie, who was always the closest thing there was to an antagonist, He remains so, but this film finally takes the time to flesh him out, make him a character instead of a Glaswegian Daffy Duck.These characters have gone too far down dark paths to emerge into light and happiness in 90 minutes, but it's safe to say that they have re-emerged into each other's lives again, and the thing that drove them into darkness has lost some of its hold. They will pass with their time, but they may gain some wisdom on the way.

every bit as good as the first one. thoroughly enjoyed.

It was never going to be able to recreate the iconic status of the first film, partly as it's increasingly difficult to do iconic. However, it's a worthy sequel, bringing the characters and the production up-to-date. All of the protaganists play their part, with Robert Carlyle stealing the show, for me, with an unsettling performance as the wonderfully psychotic Begbie. Some of the nods to the original felt a little contrived/obvious but, on the whole, the film is nicely done.

Oh yes!! Renton, Spud, Sick Boy and Begbie are back with a bang. I did wonder if they could replicate the original, but they have achieved their aim. There's some uncomfortable viewing (as per the original), but this is the film of friends (or enemies?!) who try to break free, but ultimately are drawn back to their roots. Banging soundtrack too; it was worth waiting 20 years for this!!

I loved the first Trainspotting film and this was a worthy second, picking the story up again 20 years after Renton ran off with the proceeds from a drug deal. Funny, fast-moving and as close to the bone as you can get, it was a real pleasure to see these characters reunited. By the end, I liked Spud a bit more and Begbie a whole lot less (which I didn't think possible).

God, what a disappointing film. If you want to get your grubby Jolly's, watch the original Trainspotting.It was always going to be a bit of a stretch making a second film when the first was so good and yes that's right it didn't work. Thats just the way things go ain't it.

The DVD case was broken but the DVD was OK. I was so disappointed with this. I did not notice the warnings which is my fault but I did not expect it right from the start. After two minutes I stopped it so I can't comment on the full film.