Audio/Visual – 10
Editing – 10
Entertainment – 8 (Versus a 5 for the original Die Hard 2)

9/10

review by boon23

Prologue:
For completion of the series I once bought DH2, but must confess that I haven’t watched it in years. Until DH4 this was to me the worst part of the series, created by one of my least favorite directors (and unforgettable killer of Carolco) Renny Harlin. I think whatever he touches becomes superficial. So it was a welcome ooprtunity to watch it again with a fresh mind and, well, some expectations, because of Elbarto’s first and well done fanedit: Running Scared – True Crime Edition.

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:
It was nice after some years to meet with the young John McClane again and to watch an action movie from 1990. I know, I enjoyed this edit a lot more than the original with this annoying reporter. All the changes were very well executed and are not noticeable. And they all serve the greater good of this movie. It’s still not a masterpiece, but for what it is, it’s the best version of Die Hard 2 I have ever watched and if I have to watch it again, it would be without a doubt, this fanedit.
So far, so good, BUT there is still a lot that I don’t like about this movie, especially the over-the-top scenes and the unbelievable parts. So they are on an airport with hundreds of people working there and it always is John McClane and John McClane alone, who does the cool stuff? What are the other guys doing all the time? What’s so hard about putting some electric light to guide the planes or at least help them a bit? Where is the airport staff? Why don’t they line up cars?
The sequel to Die Hard was supposed to put John McClane into another situation where he is the lonesome cowboy, but with the airport they really picked a stupid idea to make that happen.
As for this fanedit, I would have loved it,if it went further and some more stuff got deleted, for example John McClane waving the torches, before the plane blows up and various other stuff.
The already mentioned inconsistency about the terrorists being known to Holly is true.
Still this was a vast improvement over the original and shoudl be ackowledged as that: the best version of Die Hard 2 ever available.
editing: 9 of 10,
entertainment: 7 of 10 (original 5 of 10)

Image and video quality:
The video quality suffers a bit from a slight stutter in camera drives. Other than that it is perfect. Image quality is sharp and colorful. Very well preserved.
Video quality: 9 of 10

Audio editing and audio quality:
The audio editing was perfect. I did not notice anything disturbing. Sound quality is great.
audio editing: 10 of 10
sound quality: 10 of 10

presentation:
This fanedit comes with a nice animated menu, beautifully animated scene selection and good cover art. The movie credits were partly self created (which unfortunately shows a few times through change of font, but is not too distracting). There is no additional bonus material.
DVD menus: 9 of 10, cover art 9 of 10, extras: 0 of 10, existence of menus, chapters and cover art: 10 of 10

This results in a 7 of 10 rating from me for presentation.

Final result: 8 of 10 (if you sum up the numbers you’ll get to 9 of 10, but as it is my mean style I never differ more than 1 star from my entertainment of the main feature, which is good for fanedits with a very bad presentation, but high entertainment, and bad for fanedits with incredible presentation and editing quality, but a lack of entertainment).
Recommended.

I did notice one possible inconsistency created by the removal of Dick Thornberg, though. Since he was removed, the people on Holly’s plane are not aware of the terrorist situation, because Dick did not create the panic by alerting everybody as to what he discovered. However, as Holly is exiting the plane at the end, she still makes the comment to John, “They told me there were terorists!”. But she should not have been aware of that because of the removal of Dick Thornberg. She should be more or less clueless about what was really happening. Please correct me if I am mistaken. I imagine that to correct this inconsistency, that line would just need to be cut out.

Overall, an excellent fanedit that is now my preferred version for Die Hard 2. Great work!!

The editing here was VERY well done. No hard cuts whatsoever, and I could not tell that this had been fanedited (especially since I have not seen the movie in a while). The removal of William Atherton’s character was a great move. I would have liked to have seen a few more cheezy lines gone. Especially from Denis Franz’s character, and the janitor guy, but all in all, great job in toning down some cheese, and tightening it up.
Editing: 10 of 10
Entertainment: 7 of 10 (and after realizing what has been removed, I would probably rate the original a 5 or 6 now. So while this is still no masterpiece, its a fun action crime flick. For those of you that are really into this genre, you will get a big kick out of it)

Image & Video Quality
Image quality was great. The additions to the credits were really nice too, and it looked like they were a part of the original
Video Quality: 10 of 10

Audio Editing & Audio Quality
It was seamless to me. I could not hear any hard cuts at all, and it sounded fine on my system (which is just a stereo system, so I never get too anal about surround).
Audio Quality: 10 of 10
Audio Editing: 10 of 10

Presentation
Cool DVD. It comes with menu transitions, and animated menus. Nice work. We also get another elbarto1 DVD cover. No DVD extras, but everything else was great
Presentation: 9 of 10

Final Result: 9 of 10 for me
A cool watch for me, and I could not tell at all that this was a fanedit. So, as I mentioned above, as this is still no masterpiece, I think it is really well done, and it is an improvement over the original. I will happily watch elbarto1’s fanedits in the future