I’m honestly surprised that you think that cropping movies is something esoteric. Are you okay with it when they crop the Cinemascope aspect ratio to fit a widescreen TV? I refuse to watch anything that streams like that.
Really, I don’t care if you don’t feel the need to rewatch Shane in the correct aspect ratio if you just don’t care enough about the movie. I watched The Day the Earth Stood Still remake a few months ago and then found out it was streaming in the wrong aspect ration. I’m morally certain that it would still have been dogshit.

A Time To Kill is schlocky anyway, but the movies seems to be all in on the fact that a real man takes his own revenge. Samuel L. Jackson shoots the rapists before the trial. And then the good guy police officer whose leg got blown off as collateral damage during this instance of vigilantism says on the witness stand that yes, he too would have done the exact same thing in Jackson’s place. It’s a loveletter to toxic masculinity and jury nullification.
If we’re supposed to believe that the good ole’ boys would let them off for being white, then they shouldn’t have put in the scene where the white police officers stand back and watch approvingly as the black police officer beats the shit out of the suspects in a crowded bar before arresting them. When that happened I assumed it would lead to them getting off and that Jackson would kill them after that happened. But no, it’s not the characters who are stupid, it’s the movie.