Rarely have I ever seen a movie with such horrendous captioning--making it a real chore to bother sticking with the film. Here are just a few examples of why the captioning completely sucked and why the captioner was an incompetent jerk:
There are no contractions. Apostrophes are simply not present. I could live with this one--but shouldn't have to.
Words are often mistranslated due to typos. At one point you see the word 'chi1dren' and later 'guy' is translated as 'gay' (wow...some mistake). Typos abound throughout.
Often, sentences and whole chunks of dialog are simply not translated at all--often at VERY important portions of the movie. This made me wonder if what WAS translated was correct as well! It's obvious the person doing this job just didn't care and the problem got progressively worse as the film progressed.
This is a real shame, as this was the last film Jean Gabin made, as he died soon after completing the movie. He was a fine actor and the English-speaking audience deserve better. Plus, what I was able to understand (due to the crappy captioning) was very good--and I wanted to see it in as complete a version as I could. May the translator be stuck in a small hot room with a continuous stream of "Gilligan's Island" re-runs for all eternity for doing such an incompetent and uncaring job.
Jean Gabin plays a criminal who's in prison for pulling a very, very big heist. But, the money was never recovered and he's kept this a secret all the time he's been incarcerated. However, he eventually did tell his bunkmate--a prisoner who is very good at escapes. Together, they both manage to break out and head to Roma, as the money is hidden someplace around the Vatican. And to make it easier to get there, they disguise themselves as priests. However, their plan is totally thrown in the garbage when the plane they are on is hijacked! How will they manage to complete their plan...or will they?
"Holy Year" is a rather clever film--a bit of a comedy and a bit of a drama. As always, I enjoyed Gabin's performance and his older, slower and more laid-back character was quite captivating. In fact, he IS the film--and it made for a nice final film. Clever, well-written and unusual--try to find another DVD if it exists in English, as the one from Vanguard Cinema is just dreadful. If you speak French, then you are in luck! While my French is very, very, very poor, I've seen enough French films and understood enough to figure out what happened to the loot at the end of the film. However, given the god-awful captions, many English-speakers will be totally lost!
By the way, the ambush scene was HORRIBLY done in the film. First, how could the shooters not hit anyone--especially when they had time to set up and have snipers ready? Second, when the shooting is taking place, how could NO ONE on the plane not bother to shut the door to keep the hijackers from re-entering the plane?! This makes zero sense...zero. It just came off as sloppy.
There are no contractions. Apostrophes are simply not present. I could live with this one--but shouldn't have to.
Words are often mistranslated due to typos. At one point you see the word 'chi1dren' and later 'guy' is translated as 'gay' (wow...some mistake). Typos abound throughout.
Often, sentences and whole chunks of dialog are simply not translated at all--often at VERY important portions of the movie. This made me wonder if what WAS translated was correct as well! It's obvious the person doing this job just didn't care and the problem got progressively worse as the film progressed.
This is a real shame, as this was the last film Jean Gabin made, as he died soon after completing the movie. He was a fine actor and the English-speaking audience deserve better. Plus, what I was able to understand (due to the crappy captioning) was very good--and I wanted to see it in as complete a version as I could. May the translator be stuck in a small hot room with a continuous stream of "Gilligan's Island" re-runs for all eternity for doing such an incompetent and uncaring job.
Jean Gabin plays a criminal who's in prison for pulling a very, very big heist. But, the money was never recovered and he's kept this a secret all the time he's been incarcerated. However, he eventually did tell his bunkmate--a prisoner who is very good at escapes. Together, they both manage to break out and head to Roma, as the money is hidden someplace around the Vatican. And to make it easier to get there, they disguise themselves as priests. However, their plan is totally thrown in the garbage when the plane they are on is hijacked! How will they manage to complete their plan...or will they?
"Holy Year" is a rather clever film--a bit of a comedy and a bit of a drama. As always, I enjoyed Gabin's performance and his older, slower and more laid-back character was quite captivating. In fact, he IS the film--and it made for a nice final film. Clever, well-written and unusual--try to find another DVD if it exists in English, as the one from Vanguard Cinema is just dreadful. If you speak French, then you are in luck! While my French is very, very, very poor, I've seen enough French films and understood enough to figure out what happened to the loot at the end of the film. However, given the god-awful captions, many English-speakers will be totally lost!
By the way, the ambush scene was HORRIBLY done in the film. First, how could the shooters not hit anyone--especially when they had time to set up and have snipers ready? Second, when the shooting is taking place, how could NO ONE on the plane not bother to shut the door to keep the hijackers from re-entering the plane?! This makes zero sense...zero. It just came off as sloppy.
