Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

T2 Trainspotting Blu-ray Movie Review

No, not that T2.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 5, 2017

While some might think of the subject as at least a little unseemly, there has been a long and arguably distinguished list of films and television properties dealing either overtly or sometimes tangentially with addiction in all of its inglorious manifestations. The Lost Weekend, The Man with the Golden Arm, The Panic in Needle Park, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Bad Lieutenant, Postcards from the Edge, Bigger Than Life, Withnail and I, Christiane F., Go Ask Alice, Requiem for a Dream, Tender Mercies, Less Than Zero, Days of Wine and Roses, Come Back, Little Sheba, Everything Must Go, Drugstore Cowboy, Valley of the Dolls, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Clean and Sober among frankly countless others prove what a fertile and downright diverse field substance abuse has been for filmmakers, either as a central subject matter or as an added element filling in the nooks and crannies of any given character’s back story. Clean and Sober might be a suitable sobriquet for at least some elements of T2 Trainspotting, the long gestating follow up to one of the most celebrated films about addicts ever made, Danny Boyle’s acclaimed 1996 film Trainspotting, with some faltering attempts at maintaining a straight and narrow lifestyle. Interestingly T2 Trainspotting is culled from Scottish novelist Irvine Welsh’s own sequel to his original Trainspotting, a follow up called Porno and which perhaps cheekily substituted (perhaps allegorically if not in actuality) addiction to porn for addiction to drugs, though that particular plot point doesn’t really make it into the T2 Trainspotting’s screenplay by John Hodge (who adapted Welsh’s book for the original film).

As varied as that list above may well be, it’s interesting to note that few if any of those films or television properties really explores any long range aftereffects of substance abuse. Typically, especially during the “kinder, gentler” era of Hollywood’s Golden Age, an addict with a veritable monkey on his or her back often worked through problems and emerged a better, if potentially damaged, person. T2 Trainspotting is at once distinctive in its approach, offering a look at a group of (in some cases, former) addicts some twenty years after their original cinematic introductions. Boyle’s emphasis on flashy visuals, something that made the first Trainspotting so memorable, is on hand again here, though it may prevent some narrative elements from being authoritatively introduced. Mark (Ewan McGregor) is initially seen working out in a gym, something which may at least subliminally suggest a healthier lifestyle for the erstwhile Scottish bad boy, but his fall off of a treadmill and then the subsequent denouement that he’s been in Amsterdam all these years aren’t especially well developed. Even Mark’s arrival back in Scotland is just kind of posited without any real motivation offered.

Once Mark is back in Edinburgh, a brief reunion with his father (James Cosmo) gets him access to his old bedroom, where memories seem to intrude, perhaps in an unwanted fashion. Soon enough Mark decides to look up Spud (Ewen Bremner), who is in the throes of a suicide attempt which Boyle stages in that peculiar manner of his which mixes horror and hilarity in about equal measure. Mark “rescues” Spud, though Spud isn’t especially happy about that, at least initially. Mark later gets Spud on an exercise regimen in an attempt to give him a new "addiction" to focus on, something that Spud is at least a little more pleased about. Mark’s reunion with Simon (Jonny Lee Miller) has its own combo platter of drama and comedy, with the two coming to blows when Simon’s long simmering resentment over Mark’s theft of their supposed shared booty (from the original Trainspotting) finally boils over. Simon has already been shown to be a steady, even chronic, user of cocaine, a habit whose expenses he covers with a convoluted blackmail strategy that involves his girlfriend Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova) seducing wealthy men and then filming them in compromising positions. When one of these incidents doesn’t go exactly as planned, Veronika tells Simon she wants out, and Simon decides the best way forward is for them to become entrepreneurs in the so-called “sauna” industry (i.e., a brothel).

The final piece in this odd quasi “family reunion” is the volatile Begbie (Robert Carlyle), the only one of the original group to end up in prison, where he’s been incarcerated for the past two decades. When his latest attempt at being granted parole is struck down, Begbie takes matters into his own hands and crafts an escape, something that predictably brings him into the renaissance of relationships between Mark, Simon and Spud. Needless to say, Begbie is even less pleased with Mark’s long ago behavior than even Simon and Spud are, and despite Simon’s initial claims to Veronika that he (Simon) is going to make Mark pay a karmic price for his previous subterfuges, it’s actually Begbie’s plots which give the film its narrative thrust.

The passage of time and the changes it has evoked in the characters is a potent subtext running through T2 Trainspotting, giving the film a markedly melancholic aspect even when Hodge and Boyle provide vignettes that are laced with (sometimes rather black) humor. It’s actually quite refreshing to see actors some twenty years removed from their youthful versions now portraying the same characters, weighted down with years of emotional (and in some cases, physical) baggage, struggling to come to terms with lives that have not been especially artfully led. Memory intrudes regularly in this formulation, aided by Boyle’s frequent use of brief interstitials documenting scenes from the boys’ childhoods (along with snippets from the first film). All of this gives T2 Trainspotting a uniquely well developed emotional ambience which helps to elevate what is in essence a pretty straightforward plot involving revenge and, ultimately, potential salvation. That last bit may in fact tend to lump T2 Trainspotting in with some of those other long ago efforts where “happily ever after”, or something close to it anyway, is an achievable result despite scores of wasted years.

T2 Trainspotting Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

T2 Trainspotting is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. The IMDb lists a couple of Arri Alexa models as well as a 2K DI for this effort, and with some understanding of the variant approaches taken and choices made by Boyle and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, the results here are largely commendable. As mentioned above, Boyle's stylistic flourishes are fully on display, with a number of weird framings, quick interstitials of supposed "home movies" (see screenshots 7 and 13) or brief snippets of the original Trainspotting, and even occasional kind of odd grading coming into play and giving this presentation a fairly hetereogeneous appearance. Boyle really delights in a number of extreme close-ups throughout the film (as can clearly be seen in the some of the screenshots accompanying this review), and fine detail is often exceptional when this strategy is utilized. Some kind of sickly lighting (like in Simon's bar) or grading (as in the almost alien green tint adorning Edinburgh when Mark and Spud go jogging) sometimes tend to make the palette patently unnatural looking and also occasionally at least tamp down fine detail levels. There are some recurrent issues with splotchiness than can be attributed to either video noise or compression hurdles at various moments, including some brief flirtations with macroblocking (keep your eye on Mark's jacket when he enters his old bedroom for the first time).

T2 Trainspotting Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

T2 Trainspotting's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track gets a nice workout courtesy of the same kind of ubiquitous source cues that made the first film so sonically memorable. There's a lot of low end to some of the music choices Boyle brings to the film, to the point that I kind of wish amplitude had been dialed down a bit, though I should also add that prioritization is never really a problem and dialogue always is clearly at the top of the mix. There are a number of relatively nuanced moments as well, though, including some outdoor sequences where a lifelike array of ambient environmental sounds dot the surround channels. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range rather surprisingly wide.

T2 Trainspotting Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Danny Boyle and John Hodge is fun and even funny, covering a number of conceptual issues as well as elements like revisiting these characters and story after so many years.


• 20 Years in the Making: A Conversation with Danny Boyle and the Cast (1080p; 24:49) is briefly introduced by Ewen Bremner, who otherwise does not appear other than as a cardboard cutout in this genial if not overly informative sit down with the boys. Boyle more or less moderates and covers the history of the project.


• Calton Athletic Documentary: Choosing Endorphins Over Addiction (1080p; 4:25) is an unexpectedly touching short film about a group put together by the late Davie Pryce to encourage former addicts to engage in sporting activities as a way to channel their energies.


• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 30:11)

T2 Trainspotting Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I can't imagine any fan of the original Trainspotting not enjoying this long in the arriving follow up, for it has the same sort of insouciance that made the first film so energizing. I'm not sure the flimsy narrative conceits are ultimately that "meaningful", but the cast is absolutely fantastic revisiting these roles after two decades, and Boyle stages everything with his typical flair. Video has a few passing issues, but audio is boisterous (to say the least). Recommended.