I don't understand what they were trying to do? Because to me they all seemed to have a British accent when we were expecting a German one. I assumed that it meant that was their original voice but in the special feature i realised that Robert Carlyle has a scottish accent so what kind of accent was he trying to project?
It just irked me a little.
It irritated the hell out of me to the point where I couldn't resume the movie any further.
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Totally agree with Chase. I would add though that most of these peeps are just gen Y nubcakes who cant think outside the limited acedemic course box they have been programmed to pass and collapse with mortal fear if a power outage occurs and their latest social network appliance is offline or their mobile account is maxed.
Back on topic, actors/actresses are best employed using a familiar accent to convey the various class distinctions they are portraying. Thats why ROME the series used accents that cut a swathe across a range of British classes. Of course there will always be idiots that wonder why the producers didnt use latin with English subtitles. Those people will forever remain idiots no matter how many courses they study and how many initials they get after their name. Thats the modern world and short sighted twits we must now look forward to becoming our next ruling class.
generally, english language films set in other countries, particularly period films, will use english accents for at least the main language featured. i don't even think this would be noticed if it were not for this film featuring hitler. look at "valkyrie" by comparison, where the hero sounds american, hitler sounds german, and all others have english accents, even though all the characters are german. i think that's insulting to germans, as the reason it is done is to dehumanise hitler, and apparently being german makes you less relatable or sympathetic to american viewers. also, cruise's character in that film is rightfully a national hero to germany, it should be insulting not to make him sound as german or more german than hitler (who, after all, was a bavarian-speaking austrian)
shareMathew Modine had an American Ferris Buellar accent that was comically out of place.
I kept waiting for him to ask Hitler to play hooky from world domination and spend a day visiting the city and singing Danke Schoen.
I'm curious as to why a US/Canadian production with a cast largely made up of Americans has most characters speaking in English accents. If the assumption is that everyone is speaking German, it seems superfluous to effect an English accent rather than speak with their natural American accents. And then, why do Matthew Modine and David Calder (the latter a British actor!) speak with American accents, that then contrast heavily with everyone else?
Oh, of course, Modine is the anti-Nazi character, therefore the good guy, whereas the bad guys are depicted as Englishmen. Is this another chunk of an Anglophobic agenda by some Hollywood producers?
It would have been okay IMHO for most characters to speak with their own American accents and for Carlyle to speak in his native Scots or, at least, an English accent. Hitler was Austrian and, therefore, it would have been realistic for Austrian characters to speak with a different accent to the Germans.