MovieChat Forums > Driven to Kill (2009) Discussion > Seagal's Russian accent...

Seagal's Russian accent...

posted 16 years ago by JayCeezy
6 replies | jump to latest

The guy is stretching out as an actor, I'll give him that. This is a pretty good accent, and I'm not just saying that in comparison to his 'urban ghetto' lazy-tongue patois.

Plus, he has spent so much time in the straight-to-video/DVD gulag, that is must feel familiar, along with all the time spent in Budapest and Romania and all the other failed former Eastern bloc countries that provide locations for Seagal's $2million budget films.

This one is fun, just like all of his stuff. Keep your thumb on the FF to get through all the driving and restaurant scenes, and you can watch this in 45 minutes. Cheers~!

[–] DJ-Ren 16 years ago

IMHO, Segal's accent only sounded "realistic" when the camera wasn't on his face... and then his voice suddenly got deeper and, well, different. Yes I do think they dubbed Segal's accent about 60% of the time.

"OK! Let's go make some LSD!" - Fringe

-ak

[–] motormouth16 16 years ago

I actually couldnt stand any of the accents in this movie. They spoke too fast most of the time, and the only time they decided to dub the Russian on the middle of the screen was for the ending with the lead bad guy...truly pathetic in my opinion, being a big Seagal fan...plus his accent was hard to understand when he spoke English, he mumbled every line he spoke...oh well. I knew what was going on in the movie anyway, so the dialogue really didnt matter at that point.

"Hey guys...big Gulps, huh?...Well, see ya later."

[–] JayCeezy 15 years ago

Funny, I was just talking with my wife about this. My thought is that budget constraints keep many scenes from having the sound recorded. So the dialogue is added later when the movie is edited, and Steve Seagal just spends an hour dubbing in his own voice and they don't have to pay three guys to do the sound for the six weeks of filming. Just a guess, but that is my explanation for what I also noticed. Cheers.

[–] DJ-Ren 15 years ago

Well, in reality 90-95% of dialogue, sounds, etc. on TV shows and movies are "post-dubbed". And this is for bottom of the barrel Segal films, or top of the line TV shows. I have the big-box-all-inclusive-DVD-set for the TV series "The Shield", and one of the extras has a scene demonstrating the "post-dubbing". They show the scene before any dubbing is done (all you hear is some of the dialogue and some of the sound effects), then they successively show the scene with (sorry, I don't remember the order) post production main dialouge added, then background noise/dialouge, sound effects, and music.

My point is... whether or not they recorded scenes without sound, they'd still have to go back and add in dialogue and other sounds in post-production. I just felt that in some scenes Segal's Russian accent was suddenly A LOT better than before, plus it just sounded like a different person speaking. Who knows - maybe Segal only signed on for a certain period of time, the post-dubbing ran over that time limit so Segal went to go film his next Belarus masterpiece, and the filmmakers had to get someone else to "do his voice".

"And people wonder why I beat hookers..." - Tig, Sons Of Anarchy

-ak

[–] radiostyle-1 14 years ago

No, his accent is horrible for any native Russian. But it's not a bad thing, actually, it's really funny. Also, the obscene words, that he used, were beeped when it was aired on TV in Russia.

[–] Haaken78 8 years ago

Putin has just granted Stevie Russian citizenship. The accent will be even better in Driven To Kill 2!