Review Detail

L8wrtr himself got it right: what's wrong with the official cut(s) of this movie? Nothing, really. It's a good one. But even that way, this version might surpass it. In some ways, it's an atypical fanedit: many of them tend to intertwine several stories together and cut back and forth between them. This does the opposite: it separates the two stories and have them play on their own before a joint third act. Think the reverse of, for example, Split Unbreakable Glass, or what it would be like if that edit was the theatrical version and Shyamalan's three films were the fanedit. And the narrative is in this case improved because it lets us evaluate each of the two main characters on their own right: since one is a (good) cop and the other is a gangster, it no longer feels like we're contrasting a hero and a villain (though Frank is way too complex, nuanced, and interesting a character to be written off as just a "bad guy"), but we're left to decide to what extent we like each of them, particularly Frank, without the "hero" reminding us that he's there all through. It feels fresher for that, overall.

Editing is extremely well realized, as expected from one of my favorite faneditors (so glad to have him back and active!) and video and audio are excellent. This review, though, is based on a workprint L8wrtr let me preview plus a clip of an improved tweak for the final version, so I can't currently swear by the finished render (glitches do happen and tend to behave like Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition anyway) but if anything, it has to look and sound even better than what I watched while content-wise being very much the same. While I await the promised further version that'll feature a faneditor commentary, I can't recommend this edit highly enough. Welcome back, L8, my man!