Review Detail

9.4 15 10
FanFix April 27, 2013 4533
(Updated: March 13, 2022)
Overall rating
 
9.4
Audio/Video Quality
 
9.0
Audio Editing
 
10.0
Visual Editing
 
9.0
Narrative
 
9.0
Enjoyment
 
10.0
The Shadow Strikes takes what was, unfortunately, a mediocre treatment of one of the greatest fictional characters of the early 20th century, and makes it a very engaging watch. This may be the ideal way to watch this movie!

This edit has succeeded in improving The 1994 Shadow movie by tightening up the narrative, removing most of the awful dialogue and increasing pacing into something that is a much more enjoyable film. The original cut was never going to be what The Shadow deserves. This edit polishes the film into something that even Walter B. Gibson, The Shadow's creator, would be proud of.

By transferring the film to black and white and removing a lot of the nonsensical one-liners and unneccesary attempts at humor, this edit offers a pulp-noir experience, closer to the original magazine stories. Everytime I have seen the original cut I wince in many places, and wonder what the screenwriter was thinking. In many places the film feels like the screenwriter didn't know what to write, so he put in weird dialogue and gave the audience a series of strange scenes that don't make for an engaging experience. What I think this film does is trim out nearly all of the bad bits and gives us what the film should have been. Could this edit have been in color? Sure, but that's not what the editor was going for. By making this edit feel like a movie serial, the editor has demonstrated that he understands The Shadow and understands how a pulp-noir world is supposed to work.

A very well done and thoughtful effort.

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