Battle

I'm about to go into the booth, guys, because it's confession time (really hope I'm not in Boston circa 2000). I had never seen Spiely's first movie. I'd heard about it, sure, and always meant to. Also, I knew that Duel was Maniac's first edit, very well-received and I'm a fan of pretty much all of his work. So I was browsing Amazon and saw the BD for less than ten bucks, I decided to remedy both of those problems. For the film itself, really liked it. Shot so extremely well that it makes sense who did it. For the edit:

A/V Quality - 10 - Looked great, enough said.
Visual Editing - 10 - Cuts seamless, never noticeable and I missed nothing taken out.
Audio Editing - 9 - Again, really well done. As has been mentioned, the one part with the voiceover is odd (watched the edit first and it came out of nowhere, however it did not bother my wife who had also never seen the theatrical cut. She thought he was starting to crack).
Narrative - 10 - All the padding is gone. I actually prefer the narrative in the edit because it well and truly is just all about the battle. It more closely fits Spielberg's stated intentions IMO. Anything else just isn't as interesting and thus detracts from the battle.
Enjoyment - 10 - It's a thrill ride, short and sweet. What more could you want?

Duel has never looked so good. I have the DVD version of the film and it's grainy and wonderful but I've never seen it looked so polished as edited by maniac51. Trimming out the husband/wife drama and extraneous plotlines works wonders for this film. I've loved this movie since I saw it as a kid but when I tried to show it to my wife she found it boring. I feel like this version will give me another chance to show her how good young Spielberg was. The editing is great. I've seen other reviews asking to cut the internal monologue. This didn't bother me at all, it could be cut but I don't see why it's a necessity to cut it out.

The editor stated he wanted to create a roller coaster from the original film and cut out all of the bullshit. And in my opinion, he has done that. Where the original has certain lulls, the cuts here truly make it a non-stop roller coaster of tension and suspense. That being said, I agree with TM2YC about the voice-over in the uphill chase sequence and not including credits. Overall, I really enjoyed this edit!