Payback - The Hybrid Cut

February 25, 2012
*This rating was given before reviews were required*

May 12, 2012

A superb looking and very enjoyable edit.
Must have been as fun for the faneditor to make (playing with all alternate scenes) as for the audience to watch :)
Great job. 9/10

March 3, 2012

$70,000? Shit, my suits cost more than that!”

We aren’t talking some crazy Adywan style treatment hear, but this movie didn’t need that. What it needed was exactly what Neglify gave it. In addition to some small tweaks and atmospheric improvements with the black & white and music, he integrated the best of different versions of this movie into one “hybrid”.

This is the definitive version of this movie and worth anyone’s time to watch. Neglify has taken an already solid movie and cleaned it up to make it as good as it is probably ever going to get.

Payback gets a:

Fanedit rating of 8/10.
(Fanedit rating focuses on technical and creative criteria that pertain specifically to the scope and depth of changes made from the source material by the faneditor. In other words, I might hate the movie but still give a high fanedit rating if I really respect the re-editing work done to it.)

Movie rating of 9/10.
(Movie rating judges on traditional criteria of quality/enjoyment as if this were an original theatrical release being seen for the first time.)

Cracking good edit, turning Payback into gritty Noir from the 40s.
Audio work, great. Nothing sounded out of place or jumps around with gain issues.
Video work, also solid. Lot of transitions to Black n White end up losing sharpness, or the blacks pixilate. Not here. Black n White is a pain in the ass to replicate, but Neglify scores big here.

This edit utilizes material from the original Payback, as well as the Straight Up cut.
The ending hews toward Straight Up - which I really do not like.
Writer / director Helgeland seems to have his own conception of Parker, excuse me, Porter, and he knows jackshit about Don Westlake's actual creation.
Anyway, the ending pissed me off, mostly at Helgeland.

As an overall work, though, this edit was terrific and warmly applauded.

February 17, 2012

Another great edit from Neglify. All of the edits and the switching between the director’s cut and theatrical cut are seamless. No issues at all on audio or video. I’ll admit, it took me a while to get used to the black and white (mainly because I don’t watch a lot of b&w films), but after a while it just seemed like it was meant to be that way.

Score: 10 out of 10