L.A. Confidential Recut

February 26, 2012
*This rating was given before reviews were required*

February 9, 2012

It had been a long time since I had watched my copy of this one, but I always liked L.A. Confidential despite a couple of gripes. Anyway, here we go:

***SPOILERS***

Story Editing:

Most of the cuts I didn’t even notice, and the rest I didn’t miss at all (the extra love scenes, mainly). Not much was changed story-wise, though. I love the new ending. I really thought it was lame that Bud survived that shootout and that Lynn went back to him after he hit her. I’m glad that’s no longer here. Your edit ends right when it should and fits with the tone of the rest of the film.

Score: 9 out of 10.

Video Editing/Quality:

No issues in your cuts at all. I did notice a little glitch in the quality once or twice when watching it, but nothing major.

Score: 9 out of 10

Audio Editing/Quality:

Your transitions were nicely done and I never noticed any mistakes. Everything sounded good to me.

Score: 10 out of 10

Great idea, perfect execution of the edits, even though they weren’t very drastic. I enjoyed this more than the original.

Final Score: 9 out of 10

January 17, 2012

L.A. Confidential has long been on my rather shameful list of movies I somehow missed seeing, but knew I needed to. So with Neglify’s release I finally had the kick to go out and buy the film and watch it so I could see what this FEOTM winner had done.

I should first start with my brief evaluation of the original. Midway through watching it I turned to my wife and pondered what in the world Neglify would edit in this as we were both enjoying the film immensely. It’s simply a great movie. When the film finally closed I suspected at least one aspect that he’d cut, but not enough to qualify as an edit on the site, let-alone earn a victory in the competition. The original is a great flick, but ultimately if its intention was to be in the mold of the classic Film Noir’s, it failed at the ending. Simple rule of a film noir, if the hero gets what he wants at the end of the film, something has gone wrong.

I don’t know their intentions for making the film, but that was my only issue with it. But once in awhile a happy ending is nice.

So then on to Neglify's edit.

Video Quality
First I must say that I watched his V2 with an improved source, and watched it on a 52″ plasma and my brand spanking new Sony BD player. I had originally watched the film on BD, and I have to say that Neg’s edition holds up spectacularly. Some of this perhaps is the upscaling of my BD player, but the image was beautiful. 10/10

Audio Quality
My rear speakers are currently on the fritz so I didn’t get the full 5.1 treatment, but even still audio was sharp and clear. 10/10

Video Editing
Being that the theatrical is a good movie in its own right there was not a massive amount of cutting necessary for this film, but when done, it was done seamlessly. If I hadn’t seen the original first, I’d have never spotted a single edit. Great work from a first-time faneditor. 10/10

Audio Editing
Likewise, audio was smooth. Transitions were invisible. 10/10

Overall Story
Here is the real question, what of his choices? How does this edit execute on the editor’s goals and how does it stack up against the original? Overall Neglify has not done anything stunning with this edit. His cuts were very simple, but effective at helping steer this film to being more classic Noir. I had no issues with the Bud/Lynn storyline. In this new version Bud’s character is more flat and lacks depth, but this is not a terrible thing and more one of preference.

The edit succeeds in making the movie more classic Noir and I would recommend to any fan of the original. This doesn’t replace my original copy by any means, and it comes down to more of do I want to see the happy ending or the more classic Noir ending.

This is a really tough call for me because by the numbers, Neglify had done everything right. His technical execution is flawless and his story improvement leaves no holes and achieves his goals. But the edit itself is exceptionally straightforward without doing anything drastic. It doesn’t seem fair to penalize Neglify for tackling an movie that doesn’t actually start out horrible.

In terms of Story I can only give this an 8/10 simply because it doesn’t make a dramatic change in the film.

Overall Score
However, when looking at the full execution in terms of editing quality and technical quality I have to give the entire edit overall 9/10

Great job!

January 11, 2012
*This rating was given before reviews were required*

December 13, 2011
*This rating was given before reviews were required*