OT: Russian spoken in movie and tv

[mattihp]

What are the best non-russian speakers speaking russian you have heard in movies and tv?

Eliza Dushku spoke some in Dollhouse
Scarlett Johansson spoke some in Avengers and Black Widow (Did Harbour, Pugh and Weisz also speak it?)
Bret Gelman spoke some in Stranger Things

Any other examples; good or bad?

How do you react when you hear bad russian from a character supposed to be fluent in it?

I know I get entertained but annoyed when it happens to languages I somewhat master, like norwegian in Black Widow spoken with a heavy american accent and without Norwegian (seriously, it was a radio voice and should have been fixed when released digitally) intonations. Even worse were the Charlie's angels speaking "finnish". Not recognizable as finnish..

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[Caser]

Good example is probably this one:



Seriously, Rourke has been clearly practicing on the pronunciation.

As for the bad the Red Heat should be mentioned as well as (not spoken but written though) Matt Damon's passport from the Bourne Identity - both are the memes in the Russian community for many years now.

 

[Fantomas]

Viggo Mortensen made for a very convincing Russian guy in Eastern Promises, but especially due to the way he looked and moved. His speaking I don't remember all that well; I think it was not bad. VIncent Cassel played his brother in the same film and, nope, not even close.

Among the least convincing fake Russians I've seen as of late is James Norton in McMafia, a good actor but he's, as they say, 'kak vilka s butylkoi' (very Irish-Scottish-looking dude, with no semblance of slavicness).

P.S. Rourke is in Russia a lot. I'm not surprised he nailed it.

 

[mattihp]

Maybe this guy is kinda cheating as a brit born to Ukrainians.. But how convincing is he as a russian?

 

[Caser]

Maybe this guy is kinda cheating as a brit born to Ukrainians.. But how convincing is he as a russian?

Wiki tells us that "Ethnically he is half Russian, half Ossetian with some ethnic German ancestry on his father's side.", which basically means that Russian is his native language.

 

[mattihp]

Wiki tells us that "Ethnically he is half Russian, half Ossetian with some ethnic German ancestry on his father's side.", which basically means that Russian is his native language.

Ah. I heard himself calling himself british. So his russian is indistinguishable from other russians or does it has some kinks?

 

[Caser]

Ah. I heard himself calling himself british. So his russian is indistinguishable from other russians or does it has some kinks?

In terms of pronunciation there were no issues, which again isn't that surprising, but some phrases itself in that vid seemed a bit too artificial to me, like just directly translated from English to Russian.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

Maybe this guy is kinda cheating as a brit born to Ukrainians.. But how convincing is he as a russian?

I mean they probably spoke Russian at home.

 

[Bowski]

I don't really take offence at broken Russian in movies if it's limited and not too distracting from the plot.

Teddy KGB was my favourite fake Russian, even if all he said in "Russian" was "F your mother," I think (Yobvolumat) is how he chose to pronounce it?


K-19 to me was a perfect example of no one knowing what base languages to talk to with each other.
The Russian sub had Liam Neeson speaking clear meat and potatoes Irish, Harrison Ford has some kind of subtle "Russian" English accent, and the Russian extras just spoke with mostly their natural accents.

IMO, go all the way with authentic speech and subtitles, or just stick to basic English, unless a character wants to show off their bilingualism.

For SciFi, Star Trek took care of most of that with the universal translator, but it has its faults too.