Really?
I still like Joseph Gordon-Levitt (dude is gonna be big after Inception hits) and some of the scenes were funny, but I had no idea what they were saying and had to fast-forward through most of this to get some closure.
Agreed somewhat, OP.
I had to get subtitles to get through it.
I'm 27, missed the beginning of the movie, waking up to watch it half groggy, and I still manged to follow it fine. I admit that in some moments I was not 100% clear on what was happening, but given it was a detective movie, I thought that was the point. By the end it was all wrapped up neatly. I really enjoyed it. The context made most of the slang clear also.
I agree the HS setting seems silly for the story, which is why the scene where The Pin's mom is offering them Tang is hilarious. The film is aware the topic is grittier than most HS student's reality, and once I saw that then I was able to put aside my reservations.
I currently can't think of any neo-noir films other than this that I've seen, so I'm not sure how it is in comparison, however Imo there are very few faults in this movie, besides the obvious observation that high school students don't talk in this way. If you found the dialogue of the movie largely impenetrable - that is unfortunate, but it really wasn't that difficult to comprehend - this film is not 'Primer'. I found the detective-transposed-to-high-school very original, and the plot was fairly strong.
Hell, I can get you a toe by 3 o'clock this afternoon
I enjoyed the movie and appreciated what they were going for with the noir-language. However I really wish the actors had slowed down their lines, they were definitely spoken way fast and mumbled in some parts. quite a few scenes i had to rewind and turn my air conditioner off and listen reaaally hard to understand what they were saying.
I'm also willing to bet that in hindsight the director wishes they could have brought down the level on the volume of the traffic that was to be heard behind the football field on the final scene. You're getting to the final resolution and they're voices are competing with a loud-ass freeway. From what someone said it was shot in San Clemente on location and with a budget of $425,000 they might not have been able to control little things like that, but i noticed.
I don't know, the jargon added an interesting element to the dialogue, in the same way that it did in Clockwork Orange. I didn't know what on earth they were saying for the first quarter or so, but you work it out, you decode it and then you and the film are speaking the same, strange and internal language. It's supposed to be a part of the experience, I feel.
shareyeah i had trouble understanding what they were saying at times. I got the entire film when it was finally over, but certain scenes had me lost. Interesting idea, but not my favorite.
shareI found it hard to keep up with what was being said but to be honest put more blame on the sound levels than the dialouge. I tried to put the subtitles on but for some reason the copy i had didnt not have any. I remember one scene in particular near the end when they were in a field. Two characters were talking bout the audio back track of the 'wind' kept going over what they were saying.. which i found annoying
shareYou probably couldn't keep up with it because you, er, fast forwarded it, perhaps?
In a dark winter Tokyo. In the Majong parlour he waits.
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No offense bro but I'm from a non-english-speaking country (Austria) and had absolutely no troubles following the movie.
shareEnglish is my only language and when GJL is talking to brain, I had no idea
what they were talking about, guess will need sub-titles but even they might
not help. Also last scene on football field with Laura, had one heck of a time
hearing what she was saying, just call her mumbles.
I'm not American, I did not go to an American high school, I'm not part of an underground scene & I did not understand every single piece of slang. Some where meant to be esoteric (Brendan himself did not know the meaning of some, precisely the point of his conversation with Brain) & some were made up by the writer/director. However, I did not find it the least difficult to understand the gist of the conversation nor the least hard to follow the events. The plot was as clear as it should have been after a single viewing. Anyone who declares the contrary should blame no one but himslef.
In this town, I'm the leper with the most fingers.
Seeing as I'd read two pages of confused answers and nobody had yet answered the issue:
the writer/director was intentionally using language from 1930s and 1940s noir films because he thought it would be an interesting film.
As someone else said, some of the terms are practically archaic - "Kingpin", "take a powder", "blow" and "clam" - the phrase "Duck Soup" is actually the name of a film. Suggestion: if you don't understand something, try checking out the film's "Trivia" section on here, instead of dismissing it. Not a criticism, it may let you understand more films/directors over time.
As one poster (28/29) complained "We turned it off when he was talking to the VP like he was talking to a police chief... I didn't understand the context in which a kid would be talking to a principle like that..."
The context is when the director is a huge fan of noir films, and set a 40s-style noir film in a high school - it was practically the whole point of the movie.
This mixing of styles is what film lovers would call postmodern or pastiche. Think it's stupid? Star Wars is just a fantasy film set in the future, and Apocalypse Now was an 1900s British colonial novel updated to Vietnam.
If you like Maltese Falcon or Double Indemnity or whatever, you'll probably love this film.
If you think 80s films are "old", then you probably won't. No criticism, just saying...
The only trouble I had was with the slang NOT referring to drugs. "Blow," and "take a powder" sound like they're referring to, well, blow and powder.
share"Blow" and "take a powder" both mean the same thing, "leave," "get out of here."
"Duck soup," besides being the name of a movie, means "easy," like another old phrase, "a piece of cake."
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I followed it fine (24yrs), but I must admit it took me awhile to get over the whole this is taking place in a high school thing with young adults acting and talking like...anything else but young adults.
I still didn't like it that much...didn't care for any of the characters, slow pacing, bland boring setting.
6/10