7.3 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
After 20 years abroad, Mark Renton returns to Scotland and reunites with his old friends Sick Boy, Spud, and Begbie.
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle, Kelly MacdonaldDark humor | 100% |
Drama | 84% |
Crime | 81% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 16-bit)
French: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English, English SDH, French, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
UV digital copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
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).
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'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.
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.
1996
2013
2012
Collector's Edition | Theatrical on BD
1994
2012
1997
Limited Edition
1993
1971
2013
2017
2012
1994
2008
1999-2007
Includes Beanie
2014
2013
2008
2013
15th Anniversary Edition
1998
1998