The only objective criticism I can make is that there are a few places where the cutting probably went a little too far at the cost of a little bit of story. Nothing too major. The biggest is probably the cutting of the opening dance scene, which causes an issue both with Tia’s character and ruins the emotional impact of the end dance scene.

Other good news is that the run-time is now much better for this kind of movie.

Overall: 8/10

Now on to the bad news. Subjectively I am not a big fan of this edit. I have always felt that True Lies was a very misunderstood movie. The movie was intended to be a comedy, but it is a very unorthodox comedy that is handled subtly and wrapped up in big budget action shots. People expected a James Cameron action movie and were disappointed when they instead got this weird pseudo spoof. Personally I love this movie in its original form and disagree with the goals of this edit, but that is just my opinion. For those who did not like the original and just want more of an action movie, you will probably be very pleased with Elbarto’s version of the film.

I have a soft spot for the original mainly because of Jamie Lee Curtis who stole the show in my opinion.

The problem with trying to alter the feel of True Lies and make it more “Straight Faced” is that the film’s action and feel is overtly comedic and no amount of cutting can alter that fact.

Schwartzenegger steals a horse, rides it into a hotel, rides it into a lift and the villain gets away by making an incredulous leap on his motorbike from sky scrapper to sky scrapper into a roof top swimming pool to live another day. How can this action be taken with a straight face?

Schwartzenegger is being shot at and chased by guard dogs. He knocks the dogs out and in a hail of bullets has time to make a quip “Stay!” to the now dazed dogs. How can this action be taken with a straight face?

True Lies is intended to be experienced for amusement sake. It is exciting but there is no real threat of danger as the characters seem to be having a jolly good time while in “dangerous” situations. The over-the-top nature of the action is off-set by the humour that peppers the film. This is clearly not to be taken seriously. The pay-off to the implausibility of the action is the gag at the end of it. Taking away the pay off lines, however cheesy they might be, relegates the action to simply ridiculous.

The editing is pretty flawless up until the horse chase. The cut just before Schwartzenegger empathizes with the horse is very noticeable as it looks like Arnie is about to talk. There are also a few little things I would have removed such as the dogs reaction shot after Arnie knocks their heads together. This is only there to let the audience know that Arnie is not so mean as to kill a dog. The “Stay” line could have been removed quite easily. Also the line “Here we go” by Tom Arnold as he gets back into his car, could have been cut as it again suggests this has happened before and is nothing to worry about.

Especially as others have noted above, the first half i found to be excellent and then the second half i found to be average. (One minor extra i would have done would be the skiing machine gun security guards from the beginning, it was still a bit over the top)

I also agree its not the editors fault that the second half was average but the source material. Would more cutting help some how? What would be cut?
A lot of the harrier jet stuff is just so over the top, but also linked directly to the story. I wonder if the movie could have ended with the nuclear bomb kiss with out the need of the next act with the harrier?

Anyways back to the over all review i enjoyed the movie and the cut seemed to be high quality and all the edits seemed to be smooth. Good Work!

9/10 because i think you did a great job and at least half the movie is excellent now.

Like boon23, I found that I was actually enjoying myself – mostly the first 60 to 75 minutes of the edit, the second half falls flat. I don’t attribute this to the edit, but to the source material itself. Once Harry and Helen are captured, the movie begins to lag, drastically. I found my attention waning at this point.

I definitely liked the new “bathroom scene” – much ore dynamic and fast-paced. One part that i was hoping to NOT see was in the beginning. I was hoping that elbarto1 would have gotten rid of the part where Arnie smashes the two dogs together and says “Stay.” I hated it the first time I saw it and I hated it even more now.

I’d give the video quality a 7/10. The stuttered parts weren’t bad, not really distracting. Perfect 10 in every other edit. If you remotely liked original of this movie, then I would strongly suggest giving this FE a try.

Elbarto1 has done a magnificent edit and is well worth the nearly 8GB download (I have a Rapidshare Premium account via a FIOS connection, so the D/L only took about 20 mins for me).

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.