Crappy Subs

Yup... I'm watching it just now and it is driving me crazy... They'll have a conversation with five or six lines of dialogue, but only one line of subs. >:-|

I speak Japanese fairly well (spent 2 years in Japan, in a conversation I do really well, but watching movies I need the subtitles) and yeah, I too thought the subtitles were not working in the first scene, and when they did come in, I was surprised they were on. Like most other Japanese movies they do not translate exactly, they either remove fluff or they add words to what they say (Japanese often do not say their topics they leave out assuming you know what they mean) I would translate it differently most of the time, but you are not missing anything in their translations. Because of the limitations of their language most words have 2 or 3 times as many syllables in them as their English counterpart so it might seem like they are cutting a paragraph into a sentence, but for the most part they are not, but like I said, they sometimes trim the fat to make it easier to read ("Hello, I am Kitano, I am a new hire I am here to work hard, I am glad to make your aquantance." might only read "Hi, I am the new guy, Kitano")

Well, I even got a wrong timing subtitle with Takeshis and Kids Return. Kitano's films themselves are difficult to understand, and when u get a wrong timing sub, its double difficult.

I first watched Violent Cop on Film Four (back when Film Four had four channels) and was hugely impressed. Living in Ireland, I went out and bought the DVD. I was frankly appalled at the subtitles. Come to think of it, I was appalled at the whole package.

The picture quality is crap and the DVD itself is badly done. The back cover describes this movie as "Resevoir Dogs Meets Taxi Driver"- what a flimsy (and thoroughly inaccurate) way to market an already fantastic film.

It would be great if this movie or Sonatine was given the Eureka Masters of Cinema treatment or Criterion souping up. Artificial Eye did a good job with Zaotichi, anyone but the guys making it now.

Yeah, totally. There were many lines left out. I know a little Japanese, so I could usually pick up the little dialogue that was left untranslated, though.

Specifically, I remember one scene near the beginning, where Azuma walks into his house and finds a boy in Akari's room; a bunch of lines were left out. Azuma walks in and basically says "Who's here?" and she says "a friend is waiting..." or something. Usually it's easy stuff you can pick up on.

The second half was subtitled pretty well, though.

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