Video review: "Trainspotting 2"

It’s funny how the long-term cultural relevance of a film has such low correlation with its box office tally. “Trainspotting” earned only $16 million in 1996, but is arguably one of the most influential movies of the past quarter-century. Certainly, director Danny Boyle and star Ewan McGregor have become important figures.

Its sequel, “Trainspotting 2,” made more than double that -- but, I think, is destined to be largely forgotten in popular culture, in much the same way the “Wizard of Oz” sequel was.

(See? Bet you didn’t even know there was one.)

It’s a well-made film: entertaining, smart, sharp performances and plenty of nifty items out of Boyle’s bag of filmmaking tricks. In the end, though, we’re left wondering why this endeavor needed to happen.

We revisit the old gang of addict/criminals 20 years later, now middle-aged guys in various states of evolution, or not. Renton (McGregor), who ripped off his pals after a big drug score, turned to straight work in Amsterdam. Begbie (Robert Carlyle) has been serving hard time in prison ever since, dreaming of getting his hands around Renton’s throat.

Simon “Sick Boy” (Jonny Lee Miller) has taken over his family’s crumbling bar, and runs a little extortion racket on the side. Spud (Ewen Bremner), the gentle, somewhat dimwitted soul of the bunch, is very much the same -- working itinerantly in between getting high and visiting his wife and son.

After a health scare, Renton returns to look up his old friends -- well, not Begbie -- to see if there’s any way he can make amends. Spud is receptive, Sick boy less so. But they’re eventually back to their old ways, doing drugs and dreaming up cons to run. Begbie soon escapes from prison and comes seeking his own sort of reconciliation.

Renton’s old screeds about commercialism overtaking middle-class values are nicely updated for these streaming-and-Tweeting times. Maybe the real lesson of “T2” is the old saw about things staying the same the more they change.

Bonus features form a short list, but it’s pretty meaty stuff. Boyle and screenwriter John Hodge team up for a feature-length commentary track, there’s a making-of featurette with Boyle and his cast, plus deleted scenes.

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Review: "Trainspotting 2"

“So we all get old and then we can’t hack it anymore? Is that it?”
                --Mark Renton, “Trainspotting”

“You’re a tourist in your own youth.”
                --Simon aka “Sick Boy,” “Trainspotting 2”

File “Trainspotting 2” under Sequels We Never Thought We’d See. (Not to be confused with Sequels Nobody Wanted; e.g., “xXx: Return of Xander Cage.”)

“Trainspotting” from 1996, which followed a rough group of Scottish heroin addicts/thieves, launched star Ewan McGregor and director Danny Boyle, who have both gone on to major movie careers. Serious, Oscar-winning filmmakers tend to shy away from sequels because they’re seen as a generally unworthy endeavor.

But Boyle has long expressed interest in a sequel, though it took a while to round up the old gang. And it turns out that Irvine Welsh, the author of the book upon which the first movie was based, penned a follow-up novel that revisited the characters about 10 years later.

“Trainspotting 2” takes us even further out to 20 years. Our young anti-heroes -- Mark Renton (McGregor), Simon “Sick Boy” Williamson (Jonny Lee Miller), Danny “Spud” Murphy (Ewen Bremner) and Francis Begbie (Robert Caryle) -- are now middle-aged schlumps struggling to get on with meaningful lives.

The story (screenplay by John Hodge) brings the quartet back together to address old grudges, work out their individual disappointments and dream up some new schemes. It borrows heavily from the first movie, from particular shots to musical cues, including a reversal of the famous ending scene where Renton walks toward the camera with a cynical admonishment to “Choose life,” having just ripped off his mates following a big drug score.

I’ve seen the movie and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. Certainly, I liked it. Almost equally as certain, I don’t think it needed to be made.

Watching it is not unlike the experience of an estranged friend showing up on your doorstep after a long absence, a meeting filled with awkward pauses and mumbled apologies. When they leave a part of you is glad to have seen them again, while the other part wonders if some things are better left unsaid, some mysteries savored for remaining just so.

Renton has been living in Amsterdam working a straight job in accounting. He returns to Edinburgh after a couple of life-changing experiences, and to look up his old chums and see if forgiveness is a possibility. He finds Spud clean (albeit temporarily) but out of work, estranged from his wife and son.

A truly gentle soul, who seems to have gotten even more bird-like with the passing of years and the thinning of his plume-like shock of hair, Spud stands a bit apart from the story and acts as our eyes and ears.

Sick Boy is still addicted, though shifted to a more upscale cocaine habit. He runs his family’s run-down old pub, and has a side business setting up his prostitute girlfriend, Veronica (Anjela Nedyalkova), with well-to-do customers so he can film the antics and then blackmail them.

His reunion with Renton is less amicable than Spud’s, at least initially. Soon they’re back in cahoots, reminiscing about old times, running new scams and seeing who can be the first to betray the other.

Even less amenable is Begbie, the truly terrifying psychopath who seems to enjoy hurting others for its own sake. He’s been languishing in prison this whole time, and has Renton’s name on his lips in an unceasing litany for revenge. We know things are going to end grimy and bloody.

“Trainspotting” was an edgy, groundbreaking film because it provided us a funny, caustic window into the lowest dregs of society, then turned that glass around into a mirror that asked if everyday lives were really that much better. “Trainspotting 2” underlines many of the same themes without adding any meaningful postscript.

Review: "Byzantium"

I think it's pretty clear to most observers that the whole vampires-as-passionate-lovers shtick is about played out. So it's curious to see director Neil Jordan, who helped kick things off with the 1994 film version of "Interview with the Vampire," making a movie that plays out like a high-minded twist on the "Twilight" flicks.

"Byzantium" boasts Jordan's signature stylistic flourishes and sexual undercurrents. A favorite recurring theme of his, the mysterious stranger with a game-changing secret, is here represented by Eleanor. As played by Saoirse Ronan, she's over 200 years old but perpetually caught in adolescence after being turned into an immortal blood-drinker by her own mother, Clara (Gemma Arterton).

Arterton and Ronan are only a few years apart in age, and indeed their characters identify themselves as sisters to avoid suspicion. They've been traveling the world for two centuries, on the run from the brotherhood of vampires that views them as outlaws.

While Eleanor is smart, cultured and finely mannered, Clara is a low-born trollop -- literally. After being turned to prostitution at a young age and giving up her baby to a convent, she's never been able to shake her bent toward sexual exploitation. She makes an itinerant living as a stripper or prostitute, and is always scheming up a new con job.

While Clara kills wantonly and sometimes for pleasure, Eleanor only feasts upon people who know they want to die -- usually the old and lonely, with whom she shares a few intimate moments before exchanging need for need.

Their past catches up to them, and after a gruesome encounter they flee to an unnamed beach resort town, the sort of place populated by cheap carny workers and musty retirement residents. Clara quickly latches onto a sad sack (Daniel Mays) who inherited an old hotel, and soon they've set up shop there.

The story plays out in a mix of high and low concepts. Flashbacks to their origins have a novelistic feel, a tragic tale of woe amid the petticoats and arrogant noblemen. The modern sequences, though, have a moody feel and a sleek visual look. They're joined by a framing device in which Eleanor writes out her forbidden story, longhand of course, and tosses the pages into the wind.

Ronan, whose liquid blue eyes and bland prettiness tend to steer her toward passive roles, displays an impressive range of moods and emotions -- even scaring the wits out of a nosy teacher who asks too many questions. Arterton has a swashbuckling verve as the libidinous Clara.

I quite enjoyed the performance of Caleb Landry Jones as Frank, a shy boy who notices Eleanor and begins to gravitate toward her. A sickly young man, Frank is perpetually hunched and peering, and Jones croaks out all his dialogue as if he's ashamed of the words he has to utter. It's a stylized but affecting performance, and we feel Frank's sense of estrangement from the world around him, and how he would see Eleanor as a kindred soul.

"Byzantium" builds up to some fairly predictable plot turns, so the movie didn't hold many surprises for me story-wise. But it did make the idea of the eternal undead living amongst us seem fresh and even a little sexy again, which I didn't think possible. When you don't treat them as fare for teenybopper fantasies, vampires can actually seem cool.