BEFORE: This film easily could have been part of the February chain, with links to both "Bridget Jones's Baby" and two Ewan McGregor films, "Beginners" and "Miss Potter". But February's list is special, devoted to romance, and I had a feeling this film wouldn't fit in there. So I had to reschedule it, which means circling back to Mr. McGregor for two more films. So James Cosmo carries over from "Moonwalkers" for a third film in a row, and gets me closer to Movie #2,900.
THE PLOT: After 20 years abroad, Mark Renton returns to Scotland and reunites with his old friends Sick Boy, Spud, and Begbie.
AFTER: There are two kinds of films that I'll let play in the background, late at night, after I've finished my daily movie and while I'm reading comic books or playing a game on my phone, when I'm likely to fall asleep. One kind is a movie that I enjoy that holds up during repeat viewings, such as "The Big Lebowski" or "Beerfest", and the other is a film like "The Usual Suspects" or "Trainspotting", and I'll half-watch it in the hopes that I'll finally come to some kind of understanding about it, after repeated failed attempts. A couple months ago, the original "Trainspotting" film was in the background quite a bit, and that didn't really help me much.
The problem is those THICK Scottish accents, it takes about half an hour for my ear to adjust to them, and during that half hour I can't understand a thing, so I've probably missed the set-up of the original film a dozen times over. But that's why we have Wikipedia, so before watching the sequel, I took a few minutes to go over everything that went down between Renton, Begbie, Sick Boy and Spud in the original film. It's some pretty messed-up shite, and I stand behind the belief that a lot of it was presented in a very oblique manner, with some heroin-induced dream sequences that don't make much sense, but then, that's the point of a heroin-induced dream sequence, isn't it?
And I can't say I have much experience with the drug culture, not in Scotland, not even here in NYC, not since college anyway. So I avoided the 1996 film "Trainspotting" film for a long time, and then when I finally got to it, I found that I didn't really relate to it, or perhaps it didn't relate to me, so I watched it and moved on. But I couldn't help feeling over the years that I'd missed something somehow.
Now I get a second chance to understand these characters - it's 20 years later, both for me in real life and the characters in the film, and they've all come back together. Which is not necessarily a good thing, because of the way they left things between them, mostly unresolved. SPOILER ALERT for the original film - Renton took all the money, leaving some behind for Spud, and Begbie was pretty pissed about that. It's honestly quite a coincidence that Renton would show up exactly 20 years later, be able to track down Spud and Sick Boy, and it's at this very same time that Begbie manages to escape from prison. But then, if it weren't for coincidences, we wouldn't have a story that reunites all the characters, would we?
Irvine Welsh, the writer of the original novel, has written sequels since then, so "T2" borrows heavily from one of them, "Porno", but it's a loose adaptation. We already have "Zack and Miri Make a Porno", so I guess there was less reason to make "Sick Boy and Rents Make a Porno". But just like in the book, Sick Boy now owns a pub, and since business is down, he has dreams about turning it into a massage parlor, complete with a sauna for his girlfriend, because at the moment he's only making money from blackmailing schemes and needs a bigger source of income. That's when Renton comes back on the scene, he finds Spud just in time to prevent him from committing suicide, then he reunites with Sick Boy/Simon. Simon's still pissed over the deal from the first film, so he's really intending to lure Renton in on an even bigger deal, so he can screw him over for revenge.
At the same time, Begbie gets himself stabbed in prison, then escapes from the hospital. So he's back on the scene but is forced to lay low, and this enables the plot to proceed without him. Prolonging his encounter with Renton gives him time to re-connect with his wife and son, which isn't necessarily a good thing either. He only wants to take his son out on robberies, ignoring the fact that his son is getting ready to attend college, and he can't seem to get it up in bed with his wife. So he becomes one of many sad-sack losers in this film, and you start to realize that everyone here is sort of circling the drain, it's just a matter of time before their lives turn back into crap. And that's the comedy part.
Failed marriages, absent fathers, get-rich quick schemes gone bad, and, of course, relapses after getting clean. Meanwhile everyone's getting older, their health is getting worse, and business is bad. Renton gets involved in a love triangle, inserting himself between Simon and his girl/cohort, Veronika. So that's another powder-keg situation that you just know is going to blow up at some point. Simon gets pinched for his earlier blackmail schemes, so that leads to the need for bigger and bigger schemes, to pay for a lawyer and to make up for what the other income they've lost. And then a rival pimp gets word of the brothel being built, and puts the kibosh on that.
Finally, Begbie figures out that Renton's not in Amsterdam, he's right there in town, and sets a trap for his mates. The cycle of opportunity followed by betrayal finally comes to a close, at least until they make Trainspotting 3, probably set in a nursing home. But the struggle here at least felt real to me, the inability of four losers to rise above their stations perfectly encapsulates the futility of life. Why bother trying or working hard at anything?
Also starring Ewan McGregor (last heard in "Beauty and the Beast"), Ewen Bremner (last seen in "Wonder Woman"), Jonny Lee Miller (last seen in "Aeon Flux"), Robert Carlyle (last seen in "28 Weeks Later"), Kelly Macdonald (last seen in "Anna Karenina"), Shirley Henderson (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Baby"), Anjela Nedyalkova, Steven Robertson (last seen in "Joyeux Noel"), Elek Kish, Simon Weir, Bradley Welsh, Pauline Turner, Kyle Fitzpatrick, Charlie Hardie, Scot Greenan, Eileen Nicholas, Kevin McKidd (last heard in "Brave"), Gordon Kennedy, Daniel Smith, Tereza Duskova, Katie Leung (last seen in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2"), James McElvar, Connor McIndoe, Christopher Mullen, John Bell, Elijah Wolf, Michael Shaw, Ben Skelton, Aiden Haggarty, Logan Gillies, Hamish Haggerty, Daniel Jackson, with a cameo from Irvine Welsh.
RATING: 6 out of 10 yellow notepads
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