This is indeed a huge step above the commercially released travesty. Gone are the most embarrassing and just plain wrong elements like the Benny Hill video (gasp!), the Count of Monte Cristo movie garbage (like V would be so attached to a Hollywoodized dumbed down version of the tale, yeah sure), and all of Stephen Fry. I love Stephen Fry, but his character here was nothing but a lame and lamentable PC replacement for the unacceptable-to-Hollywood older lover of teen Evey. The result is much closer to the graphic novel. Unfortunately, fanediting can only achieve so much, and while garbage can be removed, what was never filmed can't be put there, and the movie as a whole now feels like a succession of vignetes going back and forth from V and Evey to the cops. It lacks cohesiveness and plays like a Greatest Hits or Reader's Digest version of the source material. Just as unfortunately, some cringeworthy moments had to stay for narrative reasons (yes, egg frying sequence, this means you!), and while a lot of crap dialogue is gone, I think some other out-of-character lines should have been removed (about half of V's dying speech) and sure there has to be a way to get rid of that Edmond Dantès reference in the end, which means nothing now that element has been excised. Also, the Wachowski-ness of V should have been toned down: that "snikt!" sound of the blades, the most obviously choreographed and show-off shots of the fights, maybe speeding up the slo-mo. Too MTV. MT*V*. Lame pun. Haha.
Otherwise, Mollo achieved quite something here. I liked the montages, even if they were a tad too long, the chapter titles and the new songs. Editing itself is mostly invisible, even if there were tiny audio pauses in several spots of the .avi version I watched. I don't think it was my computer, I rewatched the spots several times and they happened exactly in the same places. This is a good edit that is not great because of the limitations of the source material, not because of the faneditor's work. If you have to see the V for Vendetta movie, make this one your choice. But if you have never read the graphic novel... boy, oh boy, you don't know what you're missing out. 7/10.
Oh, and the V wallpaper is dressing my desktop right now.
