I doubt very much thats theres a great pool of western talent in korea to draw from but the swedish guy single handedly torpedoed the scenes he was in with his non acting. I guess it shows that even small roles need real actors in, just sticking some random dude in can really drag a film down.
I agree. He was the absolute WORST one. Even the Korean woman with her english wasn't as bad. At least she IS a good actor, just she knows absolutely no english. At least u could see she gave her best, although u could tell she had absolutely no idea what she was actually saying. The young guy (swedish I think) was absolutely terrible. With his fabulous one-liners like "You can even hear them fart" That was the worst part of the film, that one line.
His best line I would have to say was "The Family was brought here on purpose". Actually those 2 lines might of been all his lines actually because I can't remember anymore actually.
He single-handedly brought down this film almost. His acting was just so so bad, that his few scenes are memorable throughout the film because they are just that bad. I would of loved to of seen him get shot up by the north and south korean soldiers or died in in at least some way.
Go to hell Swedish Guy.
Thanks for ruining this movie and my life.
I think that both crap actors should appologise!
shareI hated the "performances" - if you could call it that - of both this young Swedish guy and the old Swiss guy with his silly pipe. I first saw the dubbed version, where I did not hear how they delivered their lines, but even then their acting was so wooden; later I switched to the original version with subtitles - and God, it's unbelievable, how bad and unnatural they speak their English lines! I'm not talking about their accents, but their mere amateurish way how they delivered all their lines. When the pipe guy talks to Sophie about the 'nasty incident' and suddenly, oh-so-angrily bursts out in German "Scheisse!", I really cringed. This was all so phony and fake.
shareThe young "Swedish" guy is actually a German soap opera actor, which is why he clearly had a German accent and not a Swedish one...
shareI thought they were Swiss and not Swedish...
share*sigh* it was a joint Swiss/Swedish UN Operation monitoring the DMZ.
Getting back to the awful European actors, bear in mind that this film was originally made for the South Korean and then if possible to Japanese/HK/Thai ect markets which don't have many so many native English speakers. Due to its success bringing it to the rest of us in the West we're presented with the somewhat unusual situation of goofy western "actors". When I was living in Japan as a teacher, I saw Kill Bill and the Last Samurai and on both occasions the audience was cracking up whenever Uma, Lucy and Mr Cruise were attempting Japanese. A bit different as people aren't used to westerners speaking thier language. Can anyone think of other great foreign films that have suffered like JSA? The Returner comes to mind, but great is hardly an appropriate word.
To be honest the poor English spoken by a few characters never once distracted me from what I believe to be a superb film. It's such a minor and unimportant aspect to the film that I can't understand why anyone would dwell on it. Regardless of any poor English, for the moment at least, this film stands IMO as Park's scond best film behind Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.
Most Recent film I've seen:
Dead Leaves(2004) by Hiroyuki Imaisha 7/10
I couldn't agree more--to say that terrible acting, strange accents, etc. by bad actors in small roles ruin a movie is like saying that a couple of ragged entrances by the woodwinds spoiled an otherwise wonderful performance of a Beethoven symphony.
shareI hated him as well, but more for the fact that he was a Swedish character with a German accent than for the fact that he was a terrible actor.
It just destroys 100% of the illusion, even more so than wooden acting. It's like putting an actor with a French accent to play a Mexican, it just doesn't work.
That was really my only gripe about the movie, the English-language parts, and the "Swede" in particular.
The young guy wasn't terrible.. it was that pipe smoking idiot that annoyed me. I felt like he was a cast-off from Hogan's Heroes.
shareJust a clarification, both actors sucked - thankfully they didn't have too much on screen time...
The Swiss guy clearly wasn't of Swiss origin - I'm 99% sure he was German.
The Swedish guy wasn't of Swedish origin - I'm 100% sure of this (being a Swede myself). German as someone noted.
Anyway, at the end when the swiss officer and the Swiss/korean lady are alone talking to each other, why don't the speak french?
I got the impression they were both from that part of Switzerland...
*lol*
I must agree that "the Swedish guy's" performance was not the best seen, but then again, most american/european ones tend to be that way in many east-Asian movies. A bit like how we portrait Asian people in our movies I guess.
But I (a real Swede to) must confess that "the Swedish guy" actually felt a bit genuinely Swedish in his awkward acting, bad english and clearly being in the wrong place but with a good intention.
Well, in the end I at least found it entertaining!
S.P.
Lol those two actors sucked. "This armchair isn't so comfortable anymore..." I burst out laughing when I heard him say Schiesse, or however you spell that.
shareIt was kinda funny. This German actor somehow managed to act as a Swededish actor who couldn't act. His accent wasn't really german, and just a little Swedish-sounding. But not really swedish...
shareIt's quite interesting to watch europeans butcher the english language more so than the korean female lead. You'd think it would be easier to bridge that gap being european. But then again, for some reason they cast germans, which any european knows has a certain fondness for dubbing everything not in german which of course further complicates the matter of hearing english spoken naturally and copying it. Maybe im prejudice about the germans on that matter but I sure cringed watching the scenes with the "swede" and it sort of started the movie on an sour note for me.
shareNo doubt they were both pretty bad but thankfully their parts were small enough that they didnt ruin the film. If you want to see REALLY BAD then check out Kim Ki-Duks Address Unknown, another great Korean movie blighted with some truely awfull "acting." The main American GI sucked so bad that i could barely watch the parts he was in. I don't think it gets any worse than that.
"If i wanted all that cgi sh*t,i'd go home and stick my dick in a nintendo"
Quentin Tarantino
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Well, it wasn't the best, but I've seen worse. And he wasn't in enough scenes for me to complain too loudly; actuallly he didn't ruin anything for me. I've seen worse from bigger players. The other day I watched Where the Truth Lies with Kevin Bacon and the acting of that Lohman chick (who was the main character) made me cringe. Horrible
Why does the fate of humanity always end up in the hands of an idiot?
Why doesn't anyone realise that this film was, at it's release, for Koreans until it's success spread it. Even if it wasn't, the main emphasis was on the Korean actors (who were superb) and the european characters would have been subtitled in their versions. It's a joy that they spoke OK English because in the Korean version they would have been subbed.
shareIf anything, I was impressed that they spoke such good English. Considering the target audience was Korean, they probably could've gotten away with speaking near gibberish. Not to say that Koreans don't know English (I hear that many of them do) just that they probably wouldn't care.
I'm not surprised that many American actors (even serious ones, at that) elicit laughs from foreign audiences when they attempt to speak in foreign tongues. I don't think the real problem was bad acting, just that no one really cared enough (and no one thought it was important enought) to pay close attention to such details. Does it ruin the film? I didn't think so, and most people don't seem to think it destroyed the film, either. Point in fact, it's hard for me to think of a film where a bad accent alone has "ruined the film" in-and-of-itself (Charleton Heston's 'mexican' accent in "Touch of Evil" comes to mind).
Incidentally, I hear that Antonio Banderas had to learn his lines phonetically for "Desperado" ('cause he didn't speak English). And (to me, at least), his performance sounded fine. I doubt many will consider Banderas a truly 'great' actor - more likely, knowing the movie would be released to a largely English-speaking crowd, the director put more emphasis on making sure his lines were delivered correctly. So I think we shouldn't be blaming the actors, but only the market for intended release.
Absolutely! Thankyou. I agree that they could have just spoken rubbish - but as Lady Vengence shows, his use of foreign tongue in his films is as someone like Tarantino might use, as in to enhance a scene etc.
sharewell the difference is the effort. clearly banderas worked on his phonetic performance more than the actors in this movie did. thats the difference.
share