Reviewed: Danny Boyle’s T2 Trainspotting; Zhang Yimou’s The Great Wall

The Trainspotting cast is reunited for the much-anticipated sequel. Sadly, it won’t be remembered as their best work.

Jonny Lee Miller and Ewan McGregor in a scene from T2 Trainspotting.

It’s fascinating to watch the 1996 heroin addiction tour de force Trainspotting today and think about who the young actors have been on-screen since. Ewan McGregor has been Obi-Wan Kenobi, James Joyce and Jesus and Satan (in the same film); Jonny Lee Miller has been Lord Byron and Sherlock Holmes (more drugs there); and Robert Carlyle has been Hitler, Hamish Macbeth and the hanger of a full monty. Now they have reunited for director Danny Boyle and screenwriter John Hodge in the much-anticipated sequel, T2 Trainspotting, and sadly it will not be remembered as the best work of any of them.

I say sadly because I rewatched Trainspotting this week andwas impressed by how well it holds up. It’s loyal to Irvine Welsh’s provocative novel: dark and violent, dirty and desperate. The humour is not frivolous but fierce. T2 isnot close to this, though fans of the original, to which it awkwardly waves a lot, especially with putrid toilets, may disagree with me.

Part of the problem is that it’s been two decades since Mark “Rent Boy” Renton (McGregor), Simon “Sick Boy” Williamson (Miller), Daniel “Spud” Murphy (Ewen Brem­ner), Tommy McKenzie (Kevin McKidd) and Francis “Franco” Begbie (Carlyle) were wild on the Scottish streets, mad, bad and dangerous to know. Ultimately they fell apart, but for a long time what mattered most was their mateship.

MORE: Jonny Lee Miller reprises his Trainspotting role

MORE: Director Danny Boyle on making the sequel

To their credit Boyle, Hodge and Welsh (who reprises his role as the criminal Mikey Forrester) have stuck to real time. Unlike Welsh’s sequel novel Porno, set 10 years after Trainspotting, it’s 20 years later and the lads are in their 40s. There have been marriages and children. This is part of the problem: the characters do not have the brittle edge, the dangerous dynamism they did before. They’re just not as interesting. Sure, Begbie is still a violent psycho but it’s not enough just to see that again, particularly when his best explosions are the ones we see in clips from the first film.

The more serious problem is the script, the performances and the relegation of the original female characters to minor roles. Kelly Macdonald, fabulous as Mark’s schoolgirl lover Diane the first time, appears but briefly. The main female character is Simon’s 20-something Bulgarian hooker girlfriend Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova, who is good).

Doyle moves quickly to the main story: Mark returns to Edinburgh. He’s been living in Amsterdam. He’s drug-free, likes running and has a decent job. He meets Spud, who is still on the gear and feels suicidal, and Simon, a pimp and blackmailer who still snorts lots of cocaine. Begbie is in jail, on a long stretch, but he soon enters the fray. Tommy died in the original.

The drama springs from the past, when Mark fled with £16,000 the gang scored in a drug deal. Now he’s back, will he and Simon hurt each other, or become lovers? Will Mark help harmless Spud? Will they all take heroin? Will Begbie kill them all? While there are a few emotional touches — Begbie talking about his father; Simon inarticulate about his lost child — it ultimately becomes an average action-drama.

Like its predecessor, T2 has a R-rating. I suspect it’s mainly because Begbie uses the c-word a lot and we see a few penises. Otherwise this is a tamer film. Only in memory are we near the pain of that baby’s death in a drug hovel, and Mark’s cold turkey vision of it crawling along his ceiling. The comedy relies heavily on viewers being in the know. You are supposed to laugh just because you see Begbie or hear him say c..t, or see a scene that winks at what happened before, or one involving vomit. New material, such as Mark and Simon having to sing in a pub they plan to rob, feels more like a skit than something real. “You’re a tourist in your own youth,’’ Simon says to Mark at one point. Unfortu­nately that could stand for the film as a whole.

Matt Damon in a scene from The Great Wall.

“1700 years to build. 5500 miles long.” So we learn at the start of The Great Wall, a Chinese-American fantasy epic that at $US150 million is the most expensive film made in China. The question, though, is: what is the wall keeping out? The answer is hordes of green mythical beasts called Tao Tei who appear every 60 years to try to destroy human civilisation.

William Garin (Matt Damon) and Pero Tovar (Pedro Pascal from Game of Thrones) are Western mercenaries in medieval China. They are after a reputed super weapon known as black powder. At the wall they are taken prisoner. The Tao Tei attack and William and Pero must decide whether to help or use the chaos to escape with the gunpowder. The brightly uniformed Chinese fighters are the Nameless Order, a more colourful version of the Night’s Watch in Game of Thrones. Many of are women, including Commander Lin (Jing Tian).

This is the first English-language film from director Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern). It is full of his visual virtuosity, particularly in the dramatic use of colour and in the panoramic camerawork. The battle scenes with the CGI-ed Tao Tei are thrilling.

One aim of this film is to bolster the joint market between the US and China, which is forecast soon to be the biggest moviegoing­ nation. That creates some difficulties, especially in the use of humour, which feels laboured.

Damon is solid as usual but it’s an oddly impassive role, beyond fight scenes. Early criticism of his role as a “white hero” saving Asians seems a bit over-the-top. The plot is predictable and the acting is muted but even so this fantasy thriller remains spectacular to watch.

T2 Trainspotting (R18+)

2.5 stars

Preview screenings this weekend, national release from February 23

The Great Wall (M)

2.5 stars

National release