is english really that hard? im not from an english-speaking country but still my english is far better than that of the actors, jeezzzzzzz.. the bad acting + the english talking sequences made me wanna cry, why couldn't they hire actors who knows how to act, and speak english?
it really destroyed the whole charm of the movie, a real good story got ruined by bad acting, really sucks.
maybe the director was smoking ganja.
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umm...that was on purpose to leave the audience as an outsider so that we would be more analytical of what we were viewing.
said the shotgun to the head
-Saul Williams
I didn't mind the accents. I just found the scenes with the Swedish people and Korean lady very boring and mechanical. They were so wooden. Maybe the director wanted it that way since they were supposed to be neutral and also as a contrast to the emotional story of the border guards. The rest of the film was great. All the guys were great including Lee byun hyun. Why is every one so hard on him? Is it because he is so good looking and has that great great smile. I am not Korean but I found the film very moving. There is no doubt that Park Chan Wook is a very talented film maker. As an Asian I applaud the Koreans. They are making the most exciting films right now.
shareThe Swedish guys are the worst actors on thie goddamn planet. The accent of the Korean girl sucked so much it was unbelievable. But at least the story was just great and how they ended with the picture it was just..... excellent.
shareSahand Asli,
Are you from the Indian subcontinent? You would find English easy if you were colonized by the the British for two hundred years.
I'm Korean and I loved this movie. However, I really have to agree with you that every time Yeong-ae Lee (Sophie Jean) spoke English it made me cringe. I really felt like they chose the wrong person for the role.
Her accent is definitely a thick Korean accent, unmistakable and definitely NOT Swiss/Swedish like the other UN officers in the movie. I sincerely wish they had picked someone who was more fluent in English or a native speaker (like Korean American or at least someone who took more English speaking classes), instead of someone who spoke like she was reciting from a middle school English language textbook.
Someone like Yunjin Kim would have been a better pick because her English is actually quite good. She was in the Korean movie "Swiri" and now plays the role as Sun in the ABC TV series Lost.
Also, I feel like her makeup was way too nice, more like she was a beauty pageant contestant instead of a Swiss Army officer. It seemed like they tried to make her too pretty so there was at least some eye candy for guys who got bored with the somewhat slow story. Also, it was so stupid how when asked if she was really in the Swiss Army, she whipped out a Swiss Army knife as proof as if those were so hard for civilians to buy (but that is another rant).
However, bad accent does not mean bad acting. I thought that apart from the woman, the acting was very strong. Care to explain more why you thought the acting was bad, apart from Yeong-ae Lee's bad English?
Hey everybody, calm down!
I am an ethnic Korean, born and grown up in Germany, also lived in Sweden for a while and I am quite interested in languages. So I feel confident enough to reply to this topic. Okay, let's do it one by one:
1) Swiss Maj. Gen. Bruno Botta: The actor Christoph Hofrichter is German. His German accent in the movie is annoying, but absolutely authentic! I don't know how good his English really is. But I have many German friends who speak English with a strong accent like the character in the movie. Considering that Botta is Swiss the accent is slightly (!) wrong as a Swiss-German native would have a different German accent than a German-German native. So all in all Botta's accent is authentic.
2) Swedish soldier: Herbert Ulrich, the actor, is also German. Therefore his accent as well. A Swedish accent would sound totally different - less hard and more like 'singing' the language. Conclusion: A Swedish soldier would have an accent, but a different one.
3) Sophie Jean: Yeong-ae Lee's accent is definitely Korean and not German or any other European language. When speaking English she sounds very similar to Kim Yoon-jin playing Sun on 'Lost'. I've read that Yeong-ae Lee studied German at school, but she's never lived in Germany as far as I know. So I don't blame her for not performing a German accent. Thus the character Sophie Jean being raised in Switzerland is unreliable.
I can't be bothered to read all the comments, so my apologies if my points have been expounded by someone else already...
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.
I disagree, it wasn't "bad" English, it was English with a heavy accent. There is a difference. I don't hear any grammatical errors during the English sequences, the only thing is that the characters do have very heavy accents. To me it also sounded that the actors who were speaking during those scenes quite possibly were fluent in English (though I don't know for sure) and that English just was not their mother tongue. I'm used to listening to people with accents speak English (1/2 of my family is foreign) so it didn't bother me in the slightest. The only one that was a little off for me was Lee's (Sophie's) accent. It was quite unmistakably Korean. But I still didn't take issue with it. Anyhow, would you rather a bunch of American actors portray Swiss & Swedish officials just so that you could be more comfortable with the accent?
This was a brilliant film and by the way, I thought the acting was, for the most part, spot on. And, yes, English really is "that hard."