"real-life limeys"

I thought the accent I heard in The Limey was tame compared to those I heard in Sexy Beast. But honestly, I have to claim ignorance as to which one is legitimate or not. All I know is that I could understand most of what he was saying in The Limey, but in Sexy Beast I had to rewind several times and STILL couldn't understand what they were saying!

Lets face it Stamp is from the east end and his accent was genuine enough for any one not from that part of the world (me included).
But this brings up a question of why Americans have problems with foreign accents so much.
As a Brit I watch all types of American films with strong regional accents and don't have many problems. Is this because British accents are 'stronger' or more varied than their American counterparts? I would prefer to think this than the much banded 'American audiences are lazy or ignorant' line that the British film industry uses to explain poor box office state side.

Of course a limey is just someone english, a name given to english sailors long ago, due to them eating limes to prevent them getting scurvy. However, the London accent is probably the most widely recognised in the states. As someone who lives in East London, land of the cockneys, I can assure you that Stamp is a genuine cockney. However , over the years he has established a "posher" accent. Maybe it was hard to revert to the accent he has spent so many years leaving behind. I notice in the notes about this film it says that originally they envisaged Michael Caine for the part. Interestingly he and Stamp were flatmates back in the days of "swinging London" and were often up for similar roles.

the accent is 'true-on' cockney and the slow delivery (IMO) is not deliberate for American audiences, but is a way that cockneys have of emphasising or making a sentence more threatening.

The only bit that spoilt it was at the start when Wilson said " ... you wrote me"
Cockneys / English NEVER say 'you wrote me', they always say 'you wrote to me'.

Small point, but it did jar.

The only over the top cockney bit was the speech to the Narcotics Squad guy - didn't see the point of that bit.

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Maybe Wilson spoke the way he did not for the benefit of the audience, but for the other characters in the movie. If he spoke really fast and did not enunciate clearly, nobody would understand what he is saying.

Seems more realistic to me that if Wilson wants to find out what happened to his daughter he'd take extra care to make sure he's understood.

I loved the movie, but didn't you think some of the Cockneyisms were a bit too contrived? OK, so maybe Soderbergh was trying to increase the cultural alienation of Stamp's character to heighten the drama? Anyway it's only "Get Carter" in LA (unlike the Stallone "Get Carter" which is just sh!te)

ChiefPolak says:
His accent is cockney, the difference in pronunciation is a generation gap and class of cockney, not bad acting. For the time period that he's from he's got it bang on and this explains why so many younger Brit film goers have criticised the accent. He also speaks a clearer form, indicating a classier East end upbringing. Not every cockney was born into rags and if you've heard the accent evolve over the last 78 years (as I have) you'll understand that the two points together can lead to several forms of pronunciation, different to today's more commonly heard cockney accent.

I totally agree. People imagine that dialect forms continue indefinitely, but (as with any aspect of language) they are constantly changing. Back in Dickens’ day the w/v substitution was a typical feature of cockney (cf. Sam Weller), but by my father’s generation (same as Stamp’s) it had virtually disappeared. A lot of young Londoners today, including East Enders, no longer speak “cockney” at all, but the generic “Essex”. Nowadays, when you hear an old cockney of Stamp’s generation it’s really something of a shock.

I don’t know any research to back the following up, but I strongly suspect that “cockneys” in films resort to rhyming slang a great deal more frequently than in real life; in fact, I think that Guy Ritchie’s films (especially the subtitled speech by the Rory Breaker character in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) have made rhyming slang more fashionable in recent real life than was formerly ever the case.

Why do you say such things? Kneel before Zod! Kneel!!

Stamp is a Londoner but his accent isn't as broad as people like Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Danny Dyer (but he's a crap actor) or any of the cast of Eastenders or Lock Stock. In fact Stamp is posh compared to them.

I've never even lived in London (I'm from near Southampton which isn't that far away and I'm pretty middle class) but I had no trouble at all with any of the things Stamp said, a lot of the slang would be familiar to most English people, so it was funny hearing the American characters saying they couldn't understand him (but then it is true that Americans sometimes have trouble with even basic British slang). As a matter of fact I found Luiz Guzman the hardest to understand (although I still understood him) with his hispanic accent, a few times I switched on the subtitles.

I was disappointed by the script because I thought it would have much more complex and colourful cockney slang, the other characters apart from Stamp have pretty dull dialogue. But then this Hollywood film was obviously made with an American audience in mind, I suppose they'd find Stamp's lines interesting but British viewers won't.