Film reviews: T2 Trainspotting, Sing, Denial and Hacksaw Ridge

T2 Trainspotting (18, 116mins)

Director: Danny Boyle

Stars: Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Jonny Lee Miller, Ewan Bremner, Kelly Macdonald

I don’t want to put you off (director Danny Boyle and the cast all deliver) but it’s better to be primed for what awaits; not a belting, tightly-made adrenaline rush of youthful folly and hope but a contemplative exploration of later-life demons, past mistakes and hard truths that takes its time.

How much it resonates with you will depend largely on your affection for and strong recollection of the characters, since the film is steeped in memories of the 1996 original. It quite literally replays in front of our eyes, courtesy of several clips, and in the characters’ heads. 

Rather than a fresh story in which we follow the drug-fuelled anti-heroes on a new chapter (as per most sequels), T2 is more of a companion piece shackled to the past, like its characters. 

John Hodge’s screenplay, only very loosely based on Porno, Irvine Welsh’s follow up novel to Trainspotting, is about a homecoming: the return from Amsterdam of Ewan McGregor’s Mark “Rent Boy” Renton after he betrayed his friends and ran off with their share of stolen drug money at the end of Trainspotting. 

Renton is now clean-living and in respectable employment but there’s a reason he wants to reconnect with his old pals, none of whom are pleased to see him.

Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) is running a failing a pub, Spud (Ewan Bremner)is still an addict and psycho Begbie (Robert Carlyle) has escaped from prison and wants to murder Renton.

The reconnecting friendship between Renton and Sick Boy provides the fun and the few highs, Begbie drives the sporadic tension and some bleak laughs as he tries to exact revenge and Spud is the surprising heart of the picture as he finds his voice as a writer. 

The music plays the nostalgia card strongly, with reboots of Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life and teasing snatches of Underworld’s Born Slippy alongside Edinburgh’s Young Fathers and Wolf Alice. 

Danny Boyle conjures up some haunting visuals and Hodge’s screenplay wisely never tries too hard to capture the zeitgeist. 

How could lightening strike twice? The result is both a touching elegy to lost youth and frustrating reminder of past glories. 

Sing! (U, 94mins)

Director: Garth Jennings

Voices: Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Seth MacFarlane, Scarlett Johansson, John C Reilly, Jennifer Saunders

On paper, Sing! doesn’t exactly soar with promise: a talent show contest for singing animals. Really? Maybe five or 10 years ago when the X Factor felt fresh. Yet animation studio Illumination, much as it did with The Secret Life Of Pets, another film based  on a simple but seemingly tired idea, hits the high notes with this exuberant, feel-good riot of crooning creatures. 

Written and directed by Briton Garth Jennings, who made 2007’s Son Of Rambow, Sing! does little unexpected in the storytelling department but it is chock-full of delightful characters, witty touches and show-stopping set-pieces.

By the time of the roof-raising finale you’ll be rooting for every one of the performers, underdogs all, although not literally: there’s an elephant, a mouse, a pig, a porcupine, a gorilla and a koala in the form of hapless impresario Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey).

The latter holds the event to save his crumbling theatre and fulfil the hopes of his late father. “Don’t let fear stop you doing the things you love,” his pa used to say. 

That’s the straightforward but effective message of this ensemble empowerment story which adroitly juggles the personal struggles of its half dozen leading characters, inhabitants of a bustling metropolis.

My favourites were teenage gorilla Johnny (Taron Egerton), who is reluctant to join the family bank-robbing business, an egocentric mouse-on-the-make Mike (Seth MacFarlane), with a voice like Frank Sinatra, and a put-upon pig (Reese Witherspoon) with 25 piglets and a graceless husband.

It’s got classic songs (Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Taylor Swift), singing animals and good jokes. What more could you want? 

VERDICT: 4/5

Denial (12A, 110mins)

Director: Mick Jackson

Stars: Rachel Weisz, Timothy Spall, Tom Wilkinson, Andrew Scott

Denial is a dramatisation of the famous libel case from the late 1990s in which Holocaust denier historian David Irving sued American academic Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books for accusing him of falsifying history.

Rachel Weisz plays the pugnacious Lipstadt and Timothy Spall is Irving but the film really belongs to Tom Wilkinson’s Richard Rampton QC – a fiercely intelligent, claret-loving libel barrister – who veils his profound disgust of Irving behind a mask of professional detachment. 

His courtroom lacerations of Irving are the film’s highlight. Scripted by David Hare, the story is rich with legal and historic interest but it’s such a one-sided conflict (Irving is repellent and doesn’t have a leg to stand on) that the drama doesn’t grip, not helped by making little effort to get under the skin of Irving and understand him psychologically – however unpleasant he may be. 

I also couldn’t shake the queasy feeling that Irving is better left well alone rather than receive further promotion.

VERDICT: 3/5

Hacksaw Ridge (18, 131mins)

Director: Mel Gibson

Stars: Andrew Garfield, Sam Worthington

With Hacksaw Ridge Mel Gibson returns to two of his favourite themes: religion and violence. It’s the simple but powerful true story of a Second World War consciousness objector, Desmond Doss (an impressive Andrew Garfield), a God-fearing youngster from Virginia who volunteered for the army but refused to hold a weapon – even during a bloody assault in Japan during which he single-handedly rescued dozens of wounded colleagues. 

Gibson’s no wuss himself, serving up some brutal carnage and dizzying battlefield mayhem. It amplifies the hero’s courage, even if you can’t help feeling – occasionally – that Mel’s primarily using the story for some merry slaughter.

VERDICT: 4/5