Review Detail

This is an interesting and well imagined edit. If you love Leon, don’t go into this expecting a basic reworking of that film. As the title of the fanedit says; its ‘Mathilda’ and the whole film is framed from that perspective. With that in mind, what Futon and ArtisDead have done is successfully taken some of the most memorable scenes from the film you love (with the exception of some of the Leon centric scenes) and seamlessly edited them together so that the film still feels familiar but is also a fresh take on the original film. The pace of the film has changed (especially the start of the film) but that’s no bad thing and I think needed to change to reflect the new framing of the film. The start of the film now feels gentler and helps draw out Mathilda’s character more than the original version of the film did.

There has clearly been a lot of thought an effort put into the soundtrack for this edit, I particularly like the music used for the new introduction of Mathilda at the start of the film and some of the fast-paced action scenes also benefit from a new sound track, notably a scene that overlays the Eurythmics. The music choices are excellent and as noted, work well on a lot of scenes, however there’s probably half a dozen too many music additions for my liking. Some of the scenes from the original movie worked for me because of the lack of music. I enjoy being able to absorb the moment and use my imagination.

Most of Mathilda’s childish infatuation / crush on Leon has been removed and I do wonder what the edit would have been like if some more of this had been left intact. It falls into the category of Mathilda’s story, however I know that Futon’s creative direction was to exclude this.

There are 2 parts of this edit that I want to specifically highlight:
1; There’s a scene where Mathilda is talking to the hotel manager and in the original film, during that exchange Mathilda tells the manager that Leon is her lover. In Futon and Art's edit, that part of the exchange has been (seamlessly) replaced with the sound of thunder and as a viewer you are left to wonder what Mathilda has told the hotel manager. This change is genius, it works REALLY well and is an improvement over the original film.
2; The revised ending where Mathilda goes back to school. Futon and Art's reimagining of this scene is far superior to the original film. No spoilers but it’s worth the wait and is a very touching end to the film.

I scored:
Audio/Video Quality: 10, everything is HD and there’s not source issues.
Visual Editing: 10, this was spot on.
Audio Editing : 8, whilst technically competent, I felt there were too many additions.
Narrative: 9, I feel that some more of Mathilda story could have been added.
Enjoyment: 8, I wasn’t able to full get into the film as much as I hoped because some scenes were dominated with music.

Well done Futon and Art, another excellent edit and is continuing to do the fan editing community proud.