One of the things that I love about Morgan Freeman's performances is his distinctive but crystal-clear diction. I don't remember ever hearing him recite non-English lines before, and I thought his Russian sounded pretty convincing, but I don't speak the language, so what do I know?
I was wondering how Freeman's Russian lines in this movie sounded to a person who understands Russian. How did he do?
Well it's pretty easy to speak fluent a few lines... just try it in front of the mirror...
shareMost of the Russian in this movie was perpetrated by Bulgarians, so it was accented from the get-go; throw in the subtitles that did not correspond to the original, poorly written and pronounced Russian lines, and Morgan Freeman's best work in Russian was the word "Nyet" in response to the password question "Are you hungry?" asked by the computer in, well, actually Bulgarian. As a native Russian speaker, I'm pretty miffed about a movie being shot in Brighton Beach with Bulgarian actors - what, they couldn't scrape up enough Russian actorss in Hollywood and New York?
P.S. Of all American actors I've seen, Dan Ackroyd does the most passable Russian.
I'd say both, Viggo Mortensen and Vincent Cassel, did a great job speaking russian in Eastern Promises
shareYou should hear how they impersonate spanish (from Spain) characters in Hollywood movies, They assume that we are all latinos and recruit mexican and Puerto Rican performers. At least it's much better than american actors trying to speak spanish (for instance Jamie Foxx in Collateral) There you need some special software to decipher what the heck they are saying.
shareI am russian. but the version of the movie i've dloaded was in russian dubbing... :)) so, you see... well, the dubbing concealed Freeman's accent perfectly :))
Seriously, the few words he's spoken haven't left much of an impression.
but the accent shown through when he answered the shortest word - 'Net'
Sounded much like 'Niet', but a bit too much to go unnoticed :)
P.S. the best russian accent, IMHO, came from Seegal in his role of Ruslan (Driven to Kill, I think). the words 'Pidaras' and 'Suka' in his version still make me laugh :)))