True Lies: Straight Faced Edition

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9.1
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8.7(3)
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9.3(3)
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9.3(3)
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9.0(2)
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(Updated: November 05, 2013)
Overall rating
 
9.8
Audio/Video Quality
 
10.0
Audio Editing
 
10.0
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10.0
Narrative
 
9.0
Enjoyment
 
10.0
Another damn good elbarto fanedit!

A/V Quality - 10
Editing - 10
Narrative - 9
Enjoyment - 10 (original 8)

Recommended drink: Screwdriver

User Review

Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
DVD
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Overall rating
 
9.3
Audio/Video Quality
 
8.0
Audio Editing
 
10.0
Visual Editing
 
10.0
Enjoyment
 
9.0
January 26, 2010 @ 3:23 am

True Lies: Straight Faced Edition by Elbarto1

review by boon23

Prologue:
I enjoyed Elbarto1′s previous edits and I was looking really forward to his tackling of TRUE LIES, because he takes a lot of care for a working plot, has a great eye for detail and still manages with interesting editing choices to make scenes work that did not it the original.
Now when it comes to TRUE LIES he picked a major turd IMO. His first 2 efforts RUNNING SCARED and DIE HARD 2 were already really good fixes, but for me the original TRUE LIES is a terribly flawed movie that managed to annoy me big time and almost made me a disbeliever in the qualities of James Cameron.
I followed the IN THE WORKS thread with excitement and discovered soon that my assumption that this one could not be truly fixed was true, yet I kept the hope that maybe the fanedit could at least be watchable. I have watched the original exactly one time and bought the DVD just because I am a collector, but never bothered to even unwrap it. It still sits on my shelf in its plastic wrapping. So my memory is from almost 16 years ago, when i watched it in the cinema. Unfortunately (or maybe this is a proof of James Cameron’s talent) the memory was still a lot intact.

As for all my reviews: this is just my personal opinion of this fanedit. I cannot tell anybody else, if he or she will experience it in the same way or the opposite. So my review is not objective and does not reflect the opinion of fanedit.org.

!!!!This review contains heavy spoilers!!!

The edit:
Right from the very start of the DVD, I knew this was going to be nice, just because the menus were awesome. The movie starts with beautiful mostly self created credits (except for the title) and sets the mood just right that this is not an action movie that gets interrupted with cheesy jokes all the time. In fact the first hour of the movie is a pretty great watch, much more in the style of a good James Bond movie than the ridiculous original. Elbarto1 took a lot of care to remove all the stupid distractions and kept me very entertained. I even laughed at some of the remaining jokes and found myself wondering how this could have happened, but it was just good.
The new bathroom scenes is one of the highlights of this fanedit. It works perfectly and keeps a great deal of tension.
When the 2nd half of the movie starts and Helen gets more involved the movie suddenly loses that tension, everything becomes more obvious and my mood changed from very entertained to slightly amused. It was not bad what I watched, but it was also not great anymore. I do not blame the faneditor for this, because the source material is much much worse and he tried his very best to keep to the previous style. Unfortunately there are just not enough great moments in the second half to let that happen.
Elbarto1 delivers what he said he wanted to: not a great movie, but a true improvement over the original. If I ever have to watch it again, it will be THIS version of course, because it is so much better. And this makes it a very worthy and good fanedit for at least all Schwarzenegger and James Cameron fans.

editing: 10 of 10 (great editing decisions, very precise. A lot of work went into this and it shows)
entertainment: 8 of 10 (the first half was really cool, the 2nd half was ok – the original got a 4 of 10 from me on imdb – I rate this with an 8 because of the huge improvement)

Image and video quality:
The video quality was in most scenes really good. During the movie a few scenes had a little stutter or the movement scenes were a bit blurry. The final tango scene stutters heavily.
Video quality: 7 of 10

Audio editing and audio quality:
audio quality was perfect.
audio editing: 10 of 10
sound quality: 10 of 10
resulting in a 10 of 10 for overall audio

presentation:
This fanedit comes with all the great goodies one can hope for. Great cover art that outmatches the original easily, awesome animated menus with sound, a lot of extras and special features (realyl nice commentaries by Elbarto1 and Blueyoda)
To sum it up:
Perfect!
10 of 10 for overall presentation

Final result: 9 of 10
It’s not a great movie now, but an incredible improvement over the original and as that and for the whole package a true work of art. I can truly recommend this fanedit. Thank you, Elbarto1, for making it, for the guts to release it (even though you could not save it entirely) and for letting me enjoy this movie for the very first time and as that get rid of my bad memories. Now if can fix LAST ACTION HERO as well, you will be my all-time hero. :)
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Overall rating
 
8.4
Audio/Video Quality
 
8.0
Audio Editing
 
8.0
Visual Editing
 
8.0
Narrative
 
9.0
Enjoyment
 
9.0
With Arnold's new project "Fubar" just dropping this weekend and being toted as a spiritual sequel to True Lies, I thought it was a perfect time to finally get around to this edit. From the heady days of 2010, this was a big early success in the fanediting community, but does it hold up?

Regardless of what you think of the original film, I'd have to say that this edit MOSTLY accomplishes the stated goal. While you wouldn't want (and couldn't do) a completely serious edit of this film, this does take out the majority of the obvious one-liners and the biggest moments that slow down the story in order to do a gag. I say "mostly" because I thought there were just a few edits that could really accomplish this better. There are several moments where the terrorists are played for goofs, and it's just really at odds with a nuclear bomb on US soil. You've got to cut them at the end bridge scene accidentally firing the rocket backwards, and for god's sake cut down the rigmarole on top of the Harrier jet. That scene is painfully long. Cut out the terrorist landing on his balls, his goofy reaction shots, and him flying away on a missile. It's easy enough to just cut out a half second from each of these and you can still show the bad guy going for his gun, then Arnold pitching him off the plane wing in a sudden dramatic move while hinting to his daughter to hang on. Add a meat-thud sound effect and that's it: terrorist defeated.

On that note, the scenes with the women screaming and flailing go on far too long here. They don't need to be panicked chickens while the guys are all icey cool. A couple screams and a bit of failing is fine, we've got it. That bridge rescue can be half as long as it is. Cut the ending scene where Bill Paxton is randomly at a spy party just to have another peeing joke. And cut yes, even more of the Tom Arnold banter, especially towards the end. On the other hand, I'm with other reviewers that the initial tango scene should've been left in, not only because it's a cool scene, but because it has thematic, serious resonance for the characters at the end.

Overall though, I think what slightly breaks the spell of this edit for me is just that it's not quite smooth enough. The community has gotten really skillful in the past decade, and what used to pass for "very smooth...except for a few cuts" now just seems like jarring errors that need to be fixed. There are several moments in this where the sound just drops out, and about half a dozen hard visual cuts where lines or scenes were removed. The overall sound mix is way too heavy on the foley effects like footsteps and zippers, and way too light on the music. It's really weird when the ruffling of a character's pant legs while walking are the same volume as his conversation!

Overall, it's debatable whether True Lies even works as a "straight" action espionage film. Maybe we just need to be okay with it being completely over-the-top and ridiculous. But I do think there's room to try the concept, maybe as an updated 2nd edition version now that the fanediting community has grown so much. In the end, I don't think this edit quite holds up, but I'd love to see a remake!

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Digital
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