There's always something from which to run away. One's past, one's present, one's responsibilities. In the case of John Wick: Chapter 2's opening scene, it's a case of driving away, and being pursued. But by whom? And for what? This sequel swiftly runs away from its opener, and strands it without any meaning, any significance - no rly, I have no idea what was going on in that scene. Anyway, it's a cracking start, and the rest of the film is up to the standard. Chapter 2 delivers more of the skills in which its predecessor excelled, and the uptick in scale is actually to the film's benefit. Chad Stahelski may be little more than a competent, efficient, adequate director, but such qualities are nothing if not invaluable in action filmmaking. More is not necessarily always more, in relation to the impact of Chapter 2's successes, but it never sells you short, never skimps on its promises. It's peculiarly attractive for a film of its ilk, with genuinely stylish production values ranging from sumptuous neo-Rococo interiors to shots lit in smouldering neon hues of fuschia, chartreuse, and indigo. The stunt work is as remarkable as you'd expect, once again asserting that a good action sequence requires nothing more than good stunt choreography, and doing so with persuasive conviction. Highlights include a shoot-em-up set in an art gallery, as Keanu Reeves' titular hitman turns his assailants' bodily fluids into installations of their own, followed by a tense sequence in a hall of mirrors, which is probably taking things a bit too far but hey, it works; a never-more-attractive Riccardo Scamarcio (credit the tailoring); a substantial role for a dog; a sexy suicide - or is that a lowlight? Not too many of those, however. Things are looking up for the inevitable Chapter 3. Hooray!
Here, now, in Trump's America, it's more important than ever to prepare for the worst, whether or not you intend to continue hoping for the best. We ought to have seen this coming, given what happened to the Transformers franchise after its vaguely-promising first film. The Lego Batman Movie doubles down on all the things that made its predecessor famous, if not made it successful; it's a distillation of its most questionable attributes, fitting the same formula to a premise altered only to better serve its worst qualities. That it's aesthetically impressive, with outstanding effects, is of negligible worth by the time it has overused its every visual motif; that it's funny is of equal worth by the time it has negated each clever quip with an ignorant or overworked one. No matter how hard he tries - and would one ever given such a wilfully noxious protagonist - the heterosexual white man just can't seem to get woke, and the viewer might wish Chris McKay and his team of five writers had just embraced this character's fascistic tendencies comme Christopher Nolan and run with it. But Warner Bros. knows what its demographic wants these days, and how to placate a gullible audience of would-be detractors; Lego knows what sells too, and there's nothing at all fundamentally intelligent or aware about bricks. The Lego Batman Movie is cheap, simplistic pandering to very little effect, and only rescued by its own intermittent technical competence. Colourful fun for the kids, no doubt, though perhaps that's all it is for the rest of us too.
The brazen, boisterous impulsivity of youth comes crawling back to the screen, wearied by age if not maturity. What lust for life remains may only be a lust for a life long since lived, the heady intensity of its highs and lows now supplanted by poignancy and regret for them. T2 Trainspotting arrives bang on time, the distance between it and its predecessor sufficient to meaningfully distinguish between the two - this film and 1996's Trainspotting exist in genuinely different times, and have genuinely different comments to make. There's perverse joy to be wrought out of a nostalgia trip into past perverse joys, though as organic as these sensations might be, and as faithfully depicted, they're inescapably muted. The real, substantial joys of T2 are in the perpetuation of that same energy that engendered those of old, and it's thus that the eternal innovator, Danny Boyle, spins a success out of a conceptually suspect sequel. He seeks to engender new highs and lows from cloth sourced from past, present and the furthest, dankest corners of warped imagination. There are overt nods to that nostalgia, though T2 goes through nostalgia altogether and out the other end, but everything about this film is overt, including the sheer, simple entertainment value it near-constantly insists on supplying. Boyle has always been an audience-attentive filmmaker, and always at his best when he has put their interests first. As ever before, this ramshackle construction falls apart so swiftly when provoked by plot necessity, and director and writer John Hodge alike yet again prove themselves apparently incapable of resolving any particular plot with any particular skill. But they've done the right work in the right places otherwise, and T2 is thus an exemplary follow-up to a bona fide classic, against all the odds.
