If bad english sequence makes you sick...

Very true, very well said- I did notice the English in JSA but I also noticed horrendous German (my mother tongue) in a number of US-produced films, just as horrendous French, Japanese, and Chinese. And no, I don't think the standard of English took away any of the brilliance of JSA.

Nadine :)

I always find it ridiculous that movie-makers can never seem to find good actors who can actually speak whatever language the script calls for. Are they really that hard to get a hold of? I'd be lying if I said that the English in JSA wasn't a bit distracting, but what was more painful was the knowledge that many U.S. films and television shows use even worse imitations of foreign languages (some of which almost approach gibberish). Being an American, I'm not usually on the receiving end of these travesties, but knowing my reaction to the English here (while not very good, it was definitely understandable) I don't think I'd be able to take it. I mean, the guy from Lost is a good actor and all, but couldn't they have given him an English-speaking role and found someone else who actually spoke Korean?

I also got a nice taste of how it feels to be on the other end of these Hollywood mistakes when I got to see Spiderman 3 in a Paris theater. When they got to the scene where Bruce Campbell was playing the "French" waiter, the entire theater burst out laughing, myself included. Not even close. However, being that it was Bruce Campbell (the coolest man in the world), I gave him a pass.

Thanks :). I'm kind of bewildered by all this - my native language is Russian, and what passes for Russian in virtually all American films/shows is simply gibberish (or at best very heavily accented) - if I strain, I'm lucky to understand a single word. It's grating, but it's surreal to see everyone getting so worked up over this. I found it mildly distracting (English is my primary language), but it didn't really detract from the movie.

Korean and English are 2 very very differnet languages,

I know cuz i speak both.

Also, yeah the enlish is bad especially the swiss girl, but this isnt as bad as Kim ki duks address unknown.

OMG the film is so *beep* intense in emotion, and its ruined by the most horrible american actors. UHHHHH. watch it an youll see, this level of bad english isnt enough to ruin the film when comapared to other such as Address unknown.

But not to say i wasnt bothered by the bad english, but it wasnt enought to ruin it for me.

There's a 3 minute dialogue scene where one character is speaking Cantonese and the other is speaking Mandarin.

Hilarious.



DelphisVoice and rjfme go to the doctor - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hfZqbZtT6E

I guess the english doesn't make a difference to me. It was so few and far between, and the story is so engrossing, it makes up for any bad acting/english.

Within you I lose myself, without you I find myself, wanting to be lost again.

"I know that in JSA the english pronunciation of the actress (LEE Young-Ae) is not very good. But, first, her character is a swiss, not an american or british. So her bad pronunciation is justified."

So by your logic, all Swiss people speak with hobbled Korean sounding accents?

Using other bad examples isn't a valid argument, whether or not other past examples of crappy accents do exist does not affect the fact that the english in this film is godawful. Therefore such complaints about it are perfectly legitimate.

From: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0260991/board/thread/54420631?d=92046257&p=5#92046257

QUOTE:
by jake14853 8 minutes ago (Wed Dec 12 2007 12:16:11)

I didn't think that the acting or English in 'JSA' was all that bad, but it was the inconsistencies between the storyline and the accents that kind of took away from the authenticity of the film, IMO.

Major Sophie Jean (played by Lee Young-Ae) was supposed to have been born and raised in Geneva, a French region of the Swiss Confederation/Switzerland. She would thus have had a slight-to-heavy French accent when she spoke English, but Lee's English was extremely thick with a Korean accent, and that obviously makes little sense considering her character's background. Her Korean would also have been accented by her Swiss-French upbringing and would have perhaps been short on modern colloquialisms, but Lee's absolutely flawless and effortless Korean also made her character less believable.

But then again, almost all American films have 'royalty' speaking in English/British accents, whether the royal in question is from France (Sophia Coppola's 'Marie Antoinette') or from outer space (Queen Amidala in George Lucas' 'Star Wars' franchise), so I guess the creative liberty taken by the director can be forgiven, since Hollywood takes its own creative license whenever the hell it wants.


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By the way, did anyone else notice the heavy GERMAN accent from the blonde guy playing the SWEDISH military attache? Another boo-boo by the casting director... but hey, how many Koreans (whom this movie was made for) would know the difference?